What is the Grass

Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitmans 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 poets life and work.

What is it, then, between us? Whitman asks. Dotys answer is to explore spaces tied to Whitmans life and spaces where he finds the poets ghost, meditating on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poets 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 Whitmans deeply hopeful vision of humanity.