Fiona Sampson

Walt Whitman’s poetry can change your life

Mark Doty describes how a close reading of ‘Song of Myself’ led to a greater understanding of his own self and the world

Walt Whitman in 1887. His extraordinary gaze survives even slow-motion 19th-century photography. (getty images) 
issue 09 May 2020

To describe a new book as ‘eagerly awaited’ is almost unpardonable. Yet Mark Doty’s What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life is exactly that. It’s not just that Doty is an extraordinarily fine writer whose every word sings on the page. Poetry has a tendency to come into its own at exceptional times such as our own.

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