A combination of deep critical analysis and deeply personal meditation, this audiobook presents an image of Walt Whitman as icon, man, poet, and queer activist. It is also, to a large extent, an autobiography of the highly acclaimed contemporary poet Mark Doty, who explores his life in terms of Whitman’s life and poetry. Narrator Jonathan Yen is unobtrusive, letting the text carry the considerable emotional weight of two lives and some of the greatest—and most revolutionary—of American poetry. There is enough going on here that the narrator can just stand back and stay out of the way. Listeners may want to be aware that some of what is going on is modestly graphic queer sex. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

"[Doty] animates Walt Whitman’s joyful proclamation that everything is connected."

"[A] dazzling and discursive meditation on Walt Whitman’s poetry.… In this homage to a poet whose voice has become a ‘permanent presence’ in his head, [Doty] has written a masterpiece, one that is as rapturously fine as the book he so lovingly and intelligently elucidates."

"Quick-witted, slyly erotic, and sometimes ecstatic, this book explores Mark Doty’s relationship with Walt Whitman, or with the idea of Walt Whitman. It is intimate in its reality and in all that it imagines, and it captures with splendid lyricism the author’s generous obsession with his forebear. Mark Doty has written a literate and lovely volume."

"Doty is a reverential penitent before the greatest American poet, giving an account of how his own subjective experience intersects with that of the singer of ‘Song of Myself.’...What Doty most shares with Whitman, however, is a heretic’s faith in language, both its promise and its failures."

"Exuberant.… This is Doty at his best: In gorgeous, calibrated sentences, he evokes the flourishes and sprung rhythms that make Whitman so contemporary."

"An incisive, personal meditation."

"[A] masterful example [of the hybrid memoir]—weaving a close reading of Whitman’s life and writings into Doty’s own ruminations on art, queerness, humanism, and the American experience."

"A celebration of gay manhood, queerness, and the power and elasticity of poetry."

"What Is the Grass may be the definitive book on Whitman’s life, afterlife and poetry. But it’s [in] the moments in Doty’s own life...that the book truly glistens."

"What Is the Grass doesn’t possess a single inelegant sentence or poorly expressed thought.… [A]n excellent opportunity to re-examine the work of one of America’s first major poets through the prose of one of its best living ones."

"What Is the Grass is a deep dive into Walt Whitman’s life, work, worldview, and something that feels like his cosmic theology. As if that weren’t enough, we’re also invited into Mark Doty’s own candid self-seeking, in episodes of the author’s life rendered in generous complexity. This beautiful, ingenious book affirms my belief in language as a living thing, and in the universe as a place overflowing with purpose and meaning. I wish all of the great poets could be reintroduced to me in such fashion!"

"[Mark] Doty puts on a clinic in how to read closely but expansively.… This is shining proof that criticism can make you want to hold it close."

"[Doty] animates Walt Whitman’s joyful proclamation that everything is connected."

A combination of deep critical analysis and deeply personal meditation, this audiobook presents an image of Walt Whitman as icon, man, poet, and queer activist. It is also, to a large extent, an autobiography of the highly acclaimed contemporary poet Mark Doty, who explores his life in terms of Whitman’s life and poetry. Narrator Jonathan Yen is unobtrusive, letting the text carry the considerable emotional weight of two lives and some of the greatest—and most revolutionary—of American poetry. There is enough going on here that the narrator can just stand back and stay out of the way. Listeners may want to be aware that some of what is going on is modestly graphic queer sex. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

2019-12-15
A renowned poet uses Walt Whitman's poetry to mirror his own life and to demonstrate the power of words.

Doty, who has won the National Book Award for Poetry (2008) and numerous other prizes, is the author of 10 poetry collections (Deep Lane, 2015, etc.) and three memoirs (Dog Years, 2007, etc.). In this new volume, the author combines biography and poetical analysis of Whitman (whom he's greatly admired for most of his life) with autobiographical material, much of which details his romantic and domestic relationships with men. Throughout, Doty displays a number of his gifts and writing techniques. He chronicles his visits to sites relevant to Whitman's story, including Brooklyn; Manhattan ("New York pulls me up out of myself, just as it must have done for Whitman"); his final home in Camden, New Jersey; and his impressive tomb in Camden, which, Doty writes, Whitman visited while it was under construction. He reveals a profound understanding of Whitman's life and poetry, paying close attention to "Song of Myself," "Calamus," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," and others. Doty also alludes periodically to other poets (especially Hart Crane and Emily Dickinson as well as some contemporary colleagues) and discusses Whitman's friendships with Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde. Through Doty's eyes, we see Whitman not only as the writer who transformed American poetry (Doty credits him for inventing free verse), but as a tireless self-promoter (he reviewed himself from time to time) and as a man of many passions. Fans of Whitman will surely enjoy Doty's extensive passages of exegesis, and many readers will admire the author's occasional descriptions of his own revisions of his ideas about Whitman's diction and poetic design. Throughout, the author exudes an exuberance about life and words that rivals that of his subject. Also informative (and necessary) are Doty's evocations of 19th-century Brooklyn and New York City.

A captivating paean to Whitman combined with an unblinking self-examination.