“[An] incisive, personal mediation.” —New York Times Book Review
Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman’s perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul. In What Is the Grass, Doty effortlessly blends biography, criticism, and memoir to keep company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet’s life and work.
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What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life
“[An] incisive, personal mediation.” —New York Times Book Review
Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman’s perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul. In What Is the Grass, Doty effortlessly blends biography, criticism, and memoir to keep company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet’s life and work.
“[An] incisive, personal mediation.” —New York Times Book Review
Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman’s perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul. In What Is the Grass, Doty effortlessly blends biography, criticism, and memoir to keep company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet’s life and work.
Mark Doty is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry and three memoirs. His many honors include the National Book Award and a Whiting Writers’ Award. He is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University and lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
Preface Apparition 1
The First Source
1 On the Extremest Verge 11
2 Nothing That Has Ceased to Arrive 25
3 Every Atom 36
4 The Elderhand 41
5 Luckier 55
The Second Source
6 The Unwriteable 73
7 (Is It Night? Are We Here Alone?) 88
8 Buds Folded Beneath Speech 100
9 Done with the Compass 120
10 The Old Old Poem Walt 133
11 Bijou 149
12 Insatiable 157
13 A Loving Bedfellow 170
The Third Source
14 I Loved Well Those Cities 183
The Fourth Source
15 Stucco'd with Quadrupeds and Birds All Over 209