"Whitman has long been more than a celebrated American author. He has become a kind of hero, whose poetry vindicates beliefs not only about poetry but also about sexuality and power. In Whitman Possessed: Poetry, Sexuality, and Popular Authority, Mark Maslan presents a challenging theory of Whitman's poetics of possession and his understandings of individual and national identity.

By reading his works in relation to nineteenth-century theories of sexual desire, poetic inspiration, and political representation, Maslan argues that the disintegration of individuality in Whitman's texts is meant not to undermine cultural hierarchies but to make poetic and political authority newly viable."--BOOK JACKET.