"Live Oak, with Moss," which I first made public in an anthology--Now a book

I negotiated with the editor of the NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE to put in my section Walt Whitman's "Live Oak, with Moss." I was marketing it as a brave gay manifesto written by Whitman who then realized he could not publish it and took it apart and stuck the sections haphazardly into CALAMUS, where they could not be recognized as a separate work of art. A member of the gay hierarchy was upset at what Whitman had written and took the scattered pieces from CALAMUS and put them together. The problem was that among the other slight changes Whitman had made as he tore apart the little masterpiece was a phrase that could be interpreted as a serious downer. The gay hierarchy wanted the sequence to be about the oppression of homosexuals. In fact, what Whitman had written was a celebration of a love affair which ended, leaving the poet dashed for a time, but resolutely going on.  I had to defend the sequence Whitman had written, but over the years everyone started anthologizing this previously untaught poetic sequence.

Now Molly Mailloux has spotted a 2019 printing of the poem. I have not dared to look at the text yet, with one eye working, but have copied some material.