Leaves of Grass is the legacy of Walt Whitman's life and at the same time the most praised and condemned book of poetry. Although fearful of social scorn, there are several poems in Leaves of Grass that are more explicit in showing homoerotic imagery, while there are several subtle – should I say "implicit" – images woven into the fabric of the book. So it's not strange that he created many different identities in order to stay safe. What Whitman faced in writing his poetry was the difficulty of describing and resonating manly, homosexual love. He had to find another voice, a rhetorical device, and his effort took two forms: a simplified and subverted play on words. The first was to understand and render the experience in everyday terms, as in the poem Behold This Swarthy Face. Whitman emphasizes masculinity "in that swarthy face, those gray eyes" (149), and other words are also expressive enough to explain to the reader what kind of person should be loved. What is not as subtle as in other Whitman poems is the idea of ​​the second part of the poem: "And I, crossing the street or on the deck of the ship, give a kiss in /in return” (149) – the encounter One of the two must be recognized anywhere, whether in the street or on the deck of a ship. Regarding the second form, Davidson notes that "the other, much more widespread, form of homoerotic love presented was through terms of oppression." , subversion” (54). An exemplary poem of this form is Not Heaving From My Ribb'd Breast Only. The lyrical subject is trapped in his fears and must come out of repression to be himself. At the end of the poem there is a sudden release: “O pulse of my life! / I need you to exist and show yourself more than in the middle of a paper......dBergman, David. Choosing Our Fathers: Gender and Identity in Whitman, Ashbery, and Richard Howard. American Literary History 1.2 (1989): 383-403. JSTOR. Internet. March 29, 2012. Davidson, Edward H.. The Presence of Walt Whitman. Journal of Aesthetic Education 17.4 (1983): 41-63. JSTOR. Internet. March 29, 2012.Herrman, Steven B. Walt Whitman and the Homoerotic Imagination. Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 1.2 (2007): 16-47. JSTOR. Internet. March 29, 2012.Maslan, Mark. Whitman and his doubles: division and union in Leaves of Grass and its critiques. American Literary History 6.1 (1994): 119-139. JSTOR. Internet. March 29, 2012. Metzer, David. Getting Walt Back: The Whitman Settings by Marc Blitzstein. Journal of the American Society for Musicology 48.2 (1995): 240-271. JSTOR. Internet. March 29, 2012. Whitman, Walt. Grass leaves. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University, 2007. Print.