Today, W.W. Norton released poet Mark Doty's latest book—
What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life. My thanks to Octavio Roca for passing along this
excerpt, which
Literary Hub has published. Here's one tidbit:
If [Whitman] sometimes changed his pronouns, or shifted the order of poems in order to blur the nature of a particular allegiance, and if he betrayed his own sexuality when confronted head-on, it would nonetheless be absurd to expect him to have been any more radical than he actually managed to be.
"absurd" — absurd itself and more Wilde's word than Whitman's! Still I look forward to reading Doty on Whitman (more so than rereading either poet).
ReplyDeleteIn case you haven't already seen it, here is the WP review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-what-is-the-grass-mark-doty-looks-at-walt-whitman-through-an-autobiographical-lens/2020/04/28/41136028-8633-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html.
ReplyDeleteWP Doty
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