Dear Kurl,
I’m glad it worked out with the Bridge to Education people. I’m glad you’re not angry with me for sending in your letters to the admissions committee.
You referred to the sullen and suffering hours, so you must be reading Walt’s “Calamus” poems. I’ve been reading those same poems, actually, over these last few weeks.
Did you know that Walt was in love for years with a man who didn’t love him back? After “Song of Myself” comes heartbreak. He feels it with his entire body, that yearning and loneliness, just like he feels everything with his entire body.
In these later poems Walt is starting to figure out that his standards for love are way too high. His vision of it was too good to be true. He realizes that he doesn’t even want love, if love is going to be this watered-down thing, this ordinary thing full of compromises and lies. That’s why these poems are so bitter: He’s realizing that he’d rather be alone than paired up partway.
So he says, Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further—let go your hand from my shoulders, Put me down and be on your way.
I’m glad you got into U of M, Kurl, and I’m glad it’s all the way up in Duluth. It’s exactly the way forward from this, from us. It’s exactly right.
It’s exactly as Walt says. Let go your hand from my shoulders. Put me down, Kurl, and be on your way.
Yours truly,
Jo