On-Going Introduction to Dear Love of Comrades

Yaele DiPlacido-Eastman questioned my title, which includes the trigger word–for someone who grew up in the Soviet Union–”comrades.” My choice of title stems not from apparatchiks of Stalinist oppression but from one of America’s greatest bards, Walt Whitman, who wrote the following poem…

I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

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This page is part of a book-in-progress, Dear Love of Comrades, which you can read here.