tatements in Leaves of Grass such as "he most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher"(47), Whitman becomes the ultimate "breeder" of American poetry, impregnating the minds of his reader with radical subjects and materials(sex and sexuality) that he portrays as the most universal and necessary subjects in poetry to ponder and diversify. The misunderstood Whitman has finally found a somewhat accurate representation of both himself as poet and himself as homosexual through David Reynolds. Reynolds has been able to find the middle ground between the two different contexts by juxtaposing both the life and writings of Whitman with the life and times of the community from which they came. He disproves the misleading notion that some have of Whitman "as a lonely voice crying out in a wilderness of homophobia"(391) and simultaneously rebuts the critics "who try to prove Whitman was fundamentally heterosexual"(490). But Reynolds is in the minority of critics who have accurately studied the two competing dichotomies of Whitman. Many recent critics do recognize and acknowledge Whitman's homosexuality but concentrate too fully upon it as the dominating factor of their analyses. And, again, the early Whitman scholars sought too hard to either ignore or marginalize it. While the more recent critics of Whitman may remain more faithful to the hard facts of Whitman's life and work, the questions of their findings as a result of an age more willing and wanting to discuss homosexuality, and sexuality in general, becomes relevant. Critics today know much more about sexuality and Whitman's life than those of previous eras. Whatever the case, as each age has progressed, Whitmaniacs have brought the reader newer and improved interpretations of Whitman. They still have yet to find an absolute Whitman because they still haven't been able to draw an absolute line between the competing entities of Whitman's poetry. And only wh...
