“A new book of poems—or of anything—by Mark Doty is good news in a dark time,” W. S. Merwin once wrote. “The precision, daring, scope, elegance of his compassion and of the language in which he embodies it are a reassuring pleasure.” Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, three acclaimed memoirs, a lyric book-length meditation on the art of the still life, and, most recently, What Is the Grass (W. W. Norton, 2020), a personal interrogation of his life-long relationship with the work of Walt Whitman. In awarding the National Book Award in 2008 for Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems, the committee described Doty as a “master” whose poems convey "ferocious compassion." Doty teaches at Rutgers University, where he serves as Distinguished Professor of English and Director of the Writers House.