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

"[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."

"Doty puts on a clinic in how to read closely but expansively, going back to Whitman’s greatest poems, bouncing them off incidents in his own life, but also the work of his contemporaries...This is shining proof that criticism can make you want to hold it close."

"An incisive, personal meditation."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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… that the book truly glistens."

"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."

"[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."

"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!"

02/01/2020

Doty (Dog Years) explores his relationship to Walt Whitman's poetry and life in this sometimes startling mixture of memoir and literary criticism, providing an invigorating introduction to the continuing artistic value of Whitman's output. This blend of the personal and critical appreciation, however, is stretched quite thin at times. Too often, Doty allows the focus on his own life and relations to distract from the greatness of his chosen master. One imagines Doty's recounting of sexual experiences felt essential to him, perhaps mirroring Whitman's un-blinkered celebration of life in all its manifest glory. And yet that is precisely where Doty's cleanly crafted lyrical writing stumbles. Too often, the Whitman he celebrates is the egocentric theosophizer of appetites and urges, instead of a literary genius. As with Whitman, readers may be overwhelmed with Doty's overabundance of imagery and intimate detail, but also (as with Whitman) audiences will find individual passages that can inspire, change, and sustain a life. VERDICT Despite its flaws, this important and very personal take on Whitman's lasting influence as "America's Poet" should be a worthwhile addition to libraries with strong poetry or LGBTQ collections.—Herman Sutter, St. Agnes Acad., Houston

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.