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The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics by Betsy Erkkila (review)

The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics by Betsy Erkkila (review) Reviews The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics. By Betsy Erkkila. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2020. 306 pp. Paper, $50.00. Around 1913, in a speech given to a gathering of the Whitman Fellowship at the Brevoort Hotel in New York, the poet and critic Max Eastman - dis tanced himself from Whitman’s “unchurchly religiousness.” Although he, too, had once tasted of the “drunkenness of Whitman’s poetry,” it longer appealed to him: he had just discovered Marxism. Betsy Erkkila’s new book seems as if written to convince apostates like Eastman that there’s political value still in Whitman’s vision of universal comradeship, both in practice (she delightedly recalls asking the members of the Transatlantic Whitman Association to hold hands) and in theory. In nine interlinked essays, writ - ten over the course of several decades, brilliantly blending scholarship and advocacy, Erkkila traces what she deems Whitman’s dream of an -idiosyn cratic “homosexual republic,” with Thomas Paine and, yes, Karl Marx as its tutelary spirits. Having previously exposed the chinks in Whitman’s poetic armor, notably his questionable views on race, women, and empire (see her Whitman the Political Poet, 1989), Erkkila now wants us to embrace the “more positive” Whitman. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Literary Realism University of Illinois Press

The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics by Betsy Erkkila (review)

Irmscher, Christopher
American Literary Realism , Volume 54 (3) – Mar 31, 2022
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Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Copyright
Copyright © Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
ISSN
1940-5103

Abstract

Reviews The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics. By Betsy Erkkila. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 2020. 306 pp. Paper, $50.00. Around 1913, in a speech given to a gathering of the Whitman Fellowship at the Brevoort Hotel in New York, the poet and critic Max Eastman - dis tanced himself from Whitman’s “unchurchly religiousness.” Although he, too, had once tasted of the “drunkenness of Whitman’s poetry,” it longer appealed to him: he had just discovered Marxism. Betsy Erkkila’s new book seems as if written to convince apostates like Eastman that there’s political value still in Whitman’s vision of universal comradeship, both in practice (she delightedly recalls asking the members of the Transatlantic Whitman Association to hold hands) and in theory. In nine interlinked essays, writ - ten over the course of several decades, brilliantly blending scholarship and advocacy, Erkkila traces what she deems Whitman’s dream of an -idiosyn cratic “homosexual republic,” with Thomas Paine and, yes, Karl Marx as its tutelary spirits. Having previously exposed the chinks in Whitman’s poetic armor, notably his questionable views on race, women, and empire (see her Whitman the Political Poet, 1989), Erkkila now wants us to embrace the “more positive” Whitman.

Journal

American Literary Realism – University of Illinois Press

Published: Mar 31, 2022

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