What is the Grass by Mark Doty

Author:Mark Doty [Doty, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473577985
Publisher: Random House

I hesitate at these passages a bit less if I view them as a voice crying out for a group that has none, a group that was newly emergent yet barely even seen to exist when these poems were composed. One can read them as acts of performative speech, as when Allen Ginsberg writes, in “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” I hereby declare the end of the War. He means Vietnam, and he means his poem to be the chant and spell that begins to end it; in the space in which his poem is heard, in the new space created by the reception of his words, the War is over.

Still, would-be saviors tread dangerous paths, and in fact the wisdom of the seer is called into question; is it possible to be enlightened and so full of yourself at once?

It’s a relief when, in “Calamus” 7, Whitman makes room for self-doubt, one of the great correctives. His usual syntax, with its long, confident strides and mastery of asides, suddenly falls to pieces:

The skies of day and night—colors, densities, forms—May-be these are, (as doubtless they are,) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known,

(How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound me and mock me!

How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them;)

May-be they only seem to me what they are, (as doubtless they indeed but seem,) as from my present point of view—And might prove, (as of course they would,) naught of what they appear, or naught any how, from entirely changed points of view…

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.