Description
Book SynopsisNamed a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by
Buzzfeed,
Library Journal,
The Millions, and
The Rumpus Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award–winning poet and best-selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman.
Trade Review"
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." -- Jessica Ferri - Los Angeles Times
"An incisive, personal meditation." -- New York Times Book Review
"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." -- John Freeman - LitHub
"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." -- Arianna Rebolini - Buzzfeed
"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." -- Ed Simon - The Millions
"[Doty] reveals a profound understanding of Whitman's life and poetry...Throughout, the author exudes an exuberance about life and words that rivals that of his subject...A captivating paean to Whitman combined with unblinking self-examination." -- Kirkus Reviews
"
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!" -- Tracy K. Smith
"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." -- Andrew Solomon
