In section 5 of "I Sing the Body Electric," the speaker of the poem employs effective use of a list to convey the tumult of a passionate embrace between a man and a woman. This list includes "love-flesh," a catch-all term that juxtaposes clever euphemism with literal physicality.

Here in this section of the poem, the speaker lists body parts as well as evocative and sensual descriptors of physical pleasure. If someone were to read this part of the poem out loud, the reader would soon become breathless, as the list is rather long. This breathlessness, exacerbated by having to pause at each of the many commas scattered throughout the stanzas, might even be accompanied by an increased heart rate. The physical experience of reading this section of the poem out loud parallels the physical experience being described in the poem.

The physical experience of sensuaity described here involves all the various forms of female and male "love-flesh." This term romanticizes the sexual act by linking it distinctly with love; at the same time, the term emphasizes the physical body, the flesh, involved in sex. This juxtaposition of idealism and stark reality makes for an even more evocative poem, one that ignores stereotypically ethereal or vague descriptions of sex that distance the reader from what the speaker is describing on the page.

In the fifth section of his poem “I sing the body electric,” Walt Whitman offers a very explicit depiction of the allures of the female body and of the actions that can result when a man is attracted by feminine beauty. The speaker celebrates a woman’s

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,

Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,

Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,

Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,

Undulating into the willing and yielding day,

Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

In a passage that so openly celebrates the pleasures of the flesh and of love, it is not surprising that Whitman coins the term “love-flesh.” This term seems to refer to passionate, sexually aroused bodies in general. It can also refer, perhaps, more particularly to a woman’s breasts. However, the most obvious and in some ways most shocking meaning of the phrase is its almost certain reference to the aroused penis. The next line makes this meaning almost undeniable, since this line seems to describe male orgasm. The next three lines also seem to allude to passionate love-making.

Little wonder that this poem generated a great deal of criticism from many of Whitman’s readers! He was writing in an era in which such phrasing would have embarrassed large sections of his audience. Yet Whitman was far less prudish, and obviously far more open about sexuality, than most of his readers.