WWQR > Vol. 18 (2000) > No. 3
Abstract
Takes issue with Vendler's "Poetry and the Mediation of Value: Whitman on Lincoln" (Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2000), arguing that "Vendler's formalist and broadly humanist reading of value . . . mainly focuses on repressing the particulars of Whitman's Americanness, of his racialized politics, and of his sexuality"; suggests that Whitman "was not interested in preserving the purity of lyric as a genre" and in fact "encourages us to transgress generic ideals and the limiting conventions of authorship with which they are associated," thus making "his poetry . . . inseparable from his prose" and leading us "to honor the idiosyncratic."
Rights
Copyright © 2001 by The University of Iowa.
Recommended Citation
Pollak, Vivian. "Poetic Value and Erotic Norms: A Response to Helen Vendler." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 18 (Winter 2001), 134-146.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/wwqr/vol18/iss3/3
Season
Winter
COinS