In her essay, "Mortal Concerns: Community, Democracy and the Weird Mr. Whitman," poet Patricia Spears Jones, New York's current Poet Laurate, does not directly address Walt Whitman's sexuality. But she does allude to it in her closing:
[Engagement with Whitman's poetry] can "generate thought and new poems that can be shared by strangers from a range of ages, ethnicities, sexualities and genders. Our capacity to imagine democracy as part of the creative process is the complicated legacy of Whitman’s call. But poets make crazy demands upon language, and it seems to me that now is the time to demonstrate what language can do in a time of crisis—not only to protest the indignities of these times but also to protect our spirits."
This isn't a long essay, but it is an inspiring one. So I encourage you to check it out.
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