What is the grass Walt Whitman in my life

Mark Doty

Book - 2020

"Effortlessly blending biography, criticism, and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and best- selling memoirist Mark Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman. Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, 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, Doty-a poet, a lover of men, a New Yorker, and an American-keeps company with Whitman and his mutable, landmark work, Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work. What is it, then, between us? Whitman asks. Doty's answer is to explore spaces tied to Whitman's life and spaces where he finds the poet...9;s ghost, meditating on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet's enduring work. How does a voice survive death? What Is the Grass is a conversation across time and space, a study of the astonishment one poet finds in the accomplishment of another, and an attempt to grasp Whitman's deeply hopeful vision of humanity"--

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BIOGRAPHY/Doty, Mark
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Subjects
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, Inc [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Mark Doty (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
viii, 278 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780393070224
  • Preface Apparition
  • The First Source
  • 1. On the Extremest Verge
  • 2. Nothing That Has Ceased to Arrive
  • 3. Every Atom
  • 4. The Elderhand
  • 5. Luckier
  • The Second Source
  • 6. The Unwriteable
  • 7. (Is It Night? Are We Here Alone?)
  • 8. Buds Folded Beneath Speech
  • 9. Done with the Compass
  • 10. The Old Old Poem Walt
  • 11. Bijou
  • 12. Insatiable
  • 13. A Loving Bedfellow
  • The Third Source
  • 14. I Loved Well Those Cities
  • The Fourth Source
  • 15. Stucco'd with Quadrupeds and Birds All Over
  • The Fifth Source
  • 16. Demon or Bird
  • 17. The Strong and Delicious Word
  • 18. What Is It Then Between Us?
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

Poet and memoirist Doty dons his teacher's hat--surely a soft, slouch number like that of Walt Whitman himself--to present a hybrid of literary study and autobiography. With his strongly proclaimed desire to merge with each reader ("For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you"), Whitman encourages Doty's approach, and Doty responds with gusto. He says Whitman's power in his best work "was fed by five sources, five streams." The first he considers Whitman's perception of the vastness of reality; the second, his sexuality; the third, the vitality and promise of the huge new city in which he lived; the fourth, the ocean of language; the last, death and deep time, particularly the measureless future. While all four sources receive Doty's penetrating and illuminating scrutiny, the second, Whitman's sexuality, which Doty shares, receives the most attention and the most autobiographical witnessing. Drawing on his own physical experience, Doty illustrates precisely what Whitman's pervasive homoerotic imagery means and how it informs his poetic achievement and grand vision of life. The cosmic delight Doty adduces from Whitman's sexuality burns bright throughout the book. Doty has given us a scintillating work of literary exegesis and gay memoir informed, as Whitman would want it, by heart, soul, and body alike.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

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

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.