Love of Comrades: The Urbanization of Community in Walt Whitman\u27s Poetry and Pragmatist Philosophy

Argues that the social crisis produced by urbanization shaped Whitman\u27s poetry and pragmatist thought in similar ways, and examines Whitman\u27s struggles with skepticism and relativism in light of his straddling of rural and urban experience, finding that Whitman\u27s untamed flow of sympathy in his urban poems of 1855 and 1856 gives way to an increasing urbane doubt and withdrawal from the city in his 1860 Calamus poems

Whitman\u27s Sexual Themes During a Decade of Revision: 1866-1876

Examines Whitman\u27s "double attitude" toward his "poems dealing with sexuality" ("a stubbornness about their importance coupled with a defensiveness bordering on apology or even regret"), focusing on "Calamus" poems (including number 16 ("Who is Now Reading This?") and "You Felons on Trial in Courts") and others (including "Song of Myself" and "A Woman Waits for Me"); critiques arguments by Arthur Golden and Oscar L. Triggs and argues that the "sexual ardor of Leaves of Grass continued to cool throughout the sixties, and the revisionary strategies of the decade beginning in 1866--the dilution of the poetry of the body and the new emphasis on spiritual matters--increased the distance between Whitman the man and the erotic personas of the early editions of Leaves of Grass.