SOURCE: “Death as Repression, Repression as Death: A Reading of Whitman's ‘Calamus Poems’” in Walt Whitman of Mickle Street, edited by Geoffrey M. Sill, The University of Tennessee Press, 1994, pp. 179-93.
In the following excerpt, Pollak suggests that in his “Calamus Poems” “Whitman uses death tropes both to deny the fulfillment of his eroticism and to affirm its vitality in the face of social and psychological oppression.”
This is a free excerpt of 67 words. There are 5,487 words (approx.
18 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Death in American Literature: Critical Essay by Vivian R. Pollak Access Pass.
