Still Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Robin Gow: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” by Walt Whitman. What is it then between us? What is the count of our scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not, distance avails not, and the place avails not. I too lived. Brooklyn of ample hills was mine. I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it. I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me. In the day among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me. In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me. I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution. I too had received identity by my body, that I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.

Robin Gow: I think that specifically the word queer is really appropriate for Whitman, and I think that the queer sensibility comes through in Whitman’s questions. I don’t think his poems have sure landing places, and I think that that’s the beauty of them, the sense that they don’t ever decided upon one thing, that they’re kind of in a constant attempt to, I guess attempt to find more questions. I think like a queer poetic sensibility, it can be applicable to definitely people who aren’t queer in the sense that, like allowing a self to be fluctuating and allowing a self to change.

Robin Gow: The reason why I love queerness is, well one of the reasons, is that idea of movement within one name. So you can have movement under the queer umbrella. And I think everybody under themselves can and probably should have movement throughout their lives and throughout what they want to consider themselves.

Joanne Freeman: That’s Robin Gow. He’s a poet, an LGBTQ activist, pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Adelphi University.