What does grass likely symbolize in these lines from the poem? A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. (from "A child said, What is the grass" by Walt Whitman)

I think this poem illustrates that process of meaning making as an individual action of inquiry that is also open to the reader. The poem begins so directly with that question coming from the child. Whitman tells us, I don’t know what it is any more than he does, but then proceeds to spend the rest of the poem telling us what it is. So having announced his position of ignorance, he is now open to the generation of possibilities. And that ‘I guess,' ‘I guess,' ‘or,' ‘or,' provides a wonderful way of allowing one figure to be posited and another one to enter without canceling out the preceding one, allowing more layers and more possibilities, something that Elizabeth Bishop does interestingly too.