Peter Doyle

Peter Doyle was an Irish Immigrant that came over to the Americas in the early 1800s. He landed in the South, D.C. and then Virginia and voluntarily fought against the Union in the Civil War. He met Walt Whitman later as a streetcar driver where they "felt to each other at once." It is said they became lovers for the last years of Whitman's life, inspiring Whitman's Calamus poems if not directly but in reassurance of the feelings portrayed in them. Doyle was also a witness to Abraham Lincoln's death in which Whitman is said to draw from his experience in his infamous poem "O Captain, My Captain."

There seems to be a shift in Whitman that I noticed in the Calamus poems. He is less preachy and confident, and more a love's servant, commenting on the beauty of nature and death and love and turning the reader away from viewing him as a teacher of sorts. Although in the end he eludes to those doubts as a test, he doesn't directly take on the role he held within Leaves of Grass as a guide for the reader. I think this has to do with his association with Doyle and new found appreciation for Love. Doyle changed Whitman as a man, more concerned with his lovers and friends, commenting on how often he thinks of them. I believe he also states somewhere that he doesn't revel in his previous beliefs on America and his appreciation for it as often as he used to. When thinking about it, maybe Doyle was to Whitman as Yoko was to Jon Lennon, still an artist but that's when he started spouting 'All You Need Is Love' and focusing on world peace and what not. In the biography in the Walt Whitman archive, it is even said that Doyle might be the reasoning for 'O Captain, My Captain's' rhyme, which was not at all Whitman's preferred verse at all.

Whitman may also have broken from his own poetical tradition and adopted rhyme to make the poem more appealing to the limerick-spouting Doyle. Interestingly, Whitman's first draft of "O Captain!" is not rhymed, but rather written in free verse.

 Oh, what things people do for love!