Vivian R. Pollak also is the author of "Dickinson: The Anxiety of Gender" (1984) and editor of "New Essays on James' 'Daisy Miller' and 'The Turn of the Screw" (1992) and "A Poet's Parents: The Courtship Letters of Emily Norcross and Edward Dickinson" (1988). She currently serves as president of the Association of Women Faculty.
(A passage from "The Erotic Whitman")
"Whitman's ideal of sexual democracy theoretically equalizes all varieties of desire and resists none. This goal remains imperfect in his textual practice, which liberates some forbidden voices and silences others. Some emancipations demonstrably matter more to Whitman than others, as do some persons. Sexism, racism, classism, homophobia: these pernicious attitudes crop up not only in Whitman's journalism and published essays but also in "Leaves of Grass" --early, middle, and late. Consequently, I locate the erotic Whitman within rather than above the literary history whose political legacy contemporary poets continue to challenge, a legacy of cultural elitism which has perpetuated various forms of material, emotional and intellectual impoverishment in our time. Still, I hope not to lose sight of the broadly inclusive Whitman who suggested, with some measure of sincerity, that to the fatherless he would be a father, to the motherless a mother, to the lovelorn a lover, to the friendless a friend, to the voiceless a voice, to anyone what he or she was seeking. Capitalizing on personal and national loneliness, this poet who believed that moral curiosity begins at home, with the self, willed himself to see beyond contemptible dreams. The Whitman who matters most to me never claimed perfect knowledge of his own emotional and intellectual needs. Rather, he honored the erotic tensions which had first shaped his quest for new forms of intimate affiliation. How Whitman developed the vision that propelled him into our future forms no small part of my theme."