Betsy Erkkila, The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020), 273 pp.

“Our style and manner of thinking have undergone a revolution more extraordinary than the political revolution,” wrote Thomas Paine as the American Revolution neared its end. “We see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than we formerly used” (qtd. on 25). In this collection of essays spanning nearly 40 years (with an extensive new introduction), Betsy Erkkila speaks powerfully to the theme of the “Whitman revolution”: the social and political upheaval that Leaves of Grass was born out of, and which was sutured into the text over its 37-year evolution; and the revolution in the national “manner of thinking” that Whitman hoped his unconventional poetry would drive toward. For those working in Whitman studies, Erkkila needs no introduction. Her 1989 monograph on Whitman the Political Poet broke new ground in offering an influential frame for the political analysis of Whitman’s poetry. The Whitman Revolution gathers together studies that address Erkkila’s major critical preoccupations: the interconnected themes of sex, poetry and politics. Brought into conversation in the same volume, the essays (all but one previously published) speak back and forth to each other in new ways and—in Whitmanian fashion—the conjunction of parts sharply illuminates the whole. Through deep historical contextualization and the nuanced discussion of the different currents of influence that connect cultural, sexual and political revolution, Erkkila confronts the larger question of why poetry in general—and Whitman’s poetry in particular—matters.