Bergman analyzes the writings of such famous American writers as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, F. O. Matthiessen, and Larry Kramer. He considers the entire range of literature, including poetry and drama, and gives attention to African or Native American themes in the work of Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Francis Grierson, David Plante and others.

In The Poetry of Disturbance, David Bergman argues that post-war poetry underwent a significant if subtle shift in emphasis, moving from the Modernist concern with the poem as a visual text to one that was chiefly oral in nature. The resulting change was disturbing, especially for those brought up on the principles of High Modernism. This new stress on orality implied a shift in the economy of the poem, away from the austerity of language advocated by Pound and Eliot to a style that conveyed freedom, expansiveness, and an innovative directness.

A collection of poems by David Bergman that deal with relationships, art, religion, myth, and family.