What is the Grass

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 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.