In the following essay, Folsom contends that, throughout Whitman's life and work, the poet maintained an ambivalent attitude toward Native Americans. Folsom notes that American "aborigines," as Whitman referred to Native Americans, were often described in his poetry with a mixture of disdain and admiration.

In the following essay, Chari stresses the centrality of the notion of the self in Whitman's poetry, demonstrating the parallels between Whitman's conception of the self as the meaning of existence and the totality of reality, and the view of the self offered by Hindu mysticism.

In the following essay, Dougherty assesses Whitman 's Drum-Taps, maintaining that while the poetry in the volume is similar in some ways to Whitman's pre-Civil War poetry, Drum-Taps also represents a sense of loss—not only a loss of faith in "physical and spiritual regeneration, " but also the poet's loss of faith in his "original poetic."

In the following essay, Kuebrich contends that Whitman intended his poetry to be, in a sense, a "new religion," in that he hoped to encourage the spiritual growth of his readers and offer a vision which would fuse religious experience with contemporary views on science, technology, and the emerging American republic.

In the following essay, Erkkila maintains that critics who focus on the centrality of sexuality, and particularly homosexuality, in Whitman's work typically distinguish between the private and public Whitman, and between the themes of homosexuality and democracy. Erkkila argues against this reading, stressing instead the relationship, rather than the distinction, between homosexuality and democracy in Whitman's poetry.

In the following essay, Fast examines Whitman's Sea-Drift poems as a whole, focusing on how their organization within the larger Leaves of Grass helps to develop the overall themes of self-exploration and the promise of transcendence.

In the following essay, Fone offers an overview of how the homoeroticism in Whitman's work has been interpreted by critics over time. Fone maintains that when Whitman criticism has been centered on the subject of homosexuality, the homophobia inherent in much of the criticism has hampered both textual and biographical study.

In the following essay, Vendler examines the various influences on Whitman's style in his “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd” and stresses his “de-Christianizing” of the elegy form.

In the following essay, Dean explores Whitman's difficulty in coming to a conclusion and facing temporality as evidenced in his poetry, noting that he does finally succeed in accepting endings in his First Annex: Sands at Seventy.

In the following essay originally published in 1989, Pollak suggests that in his “Calamus Poems,” Whitman uses “death tropes” to both deny and affirm his erotic fulfillment in the context of social and psychological oppression.

In the following essay, Killingsworth argues that the concept of expressive individualism—a twentieth-century attitude which promotes success as its primary goal and looks to "internal, intuitive measures of achievement" rather than external standards—exemplifies Whitman's beliefs about the nature of selfhood as both individual and universal.

In the following essay, Cavitch discusses Whitman's attempt to come to terms with his father's death and with his mother's self-centeredness in his “Song of the Broad-Axe.”