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57
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
46/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
Mark Doty
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Date:
April 14, 2020
Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitmanâs bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Dotyâa poet, a New Yorker, and an Americanâkeeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poetâs life and work.
What The Reviewers Say
What Is the Grass may be the definitive book on Whitman’s life, afterlife and poetry. But it’s the moments in Doty’s own life—his first marriage to a woman, who had a son his age; his joy in his first love affairs with men—that the book truly glistens.
... excellent.
Doty's memoir is not only an exaltation of America's troubadour, but also a celebration of gay manhood, queerness, and the power and elasticity of poetry.
Doty, like Whitman, is gifted with words, a lover of beauty and of men, a New Yorker.
