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David Haven Blake

David Haven Blake teaches at the College of New Jersey and is the author of Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity, forthcoming from Yale.

Author

Reading Whitman, Growing Up Rock ‘n’ Roll

Spring 2005 | Essays

With the exception of television, no cultural influence in the last forty years has been as powerful and pervasive as popular music. Across a startling range of forms and styles—heavy metal, hip-hop, emo, rhythm and blues, glam, jam, grunge, and punk (to name just a few)—the music has shaped everything from our fantasies to our sexuality to the way we express emotional conflict.