Mark Doty
Visiting Poet
“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.
Select Poems
14th Street Gym
Beauty that does not disguise the wound,
but reads through to the lack it marks:
the one-armed man lifts himself again
on the assisted pull-up machine,
sleeve of––sparrows?––and morning glories
swelling with each upward pull.
In the locker room, I praise his ink
and he turns––to thank me, and so I’ll notice
(what you can’t restore, inscribed)
the blue wing needled on the socket.
From Deep Lane (Norton, 2015)
My ex says he likes to ride on the top level
of the George Washington Bridge,
because then he’s closer to his Lord.
I say, but isn’t God immanent,
and he says, that’s true too, and I say,
well, how can you be any closer then?
He enjoys the mystery of contradiction,
likes being lifted up, while I think the highest
level of the bridge is terrifying;
I act as though I am brave, because
I understand that it’s beautiful up here,
shockingly so, April pouring its gold
over the gathered Hudson,
but still I think of Rilke saying beauty’s
the beginning of a terror we can hardly bear.
My ex would say it’s the other way round,
terror the beginning of a terror we can hardly bear.
My ex would say it’s the other way round,
terror the beginning of some radical beauty,
and he’s happy, while I drive the appalling,
crowded lane, and he looks out over the edges,
humming a little, entirely pleased.
From Deep Lane (Norton, 2015)
Why think sun and stones less alive than sea lions,
why privilege proteins or the slow burn of carbohydrates,
is that the only life there is?
Or, he might say, fire and granite suffer as much as
everything else,
it would be a diminishment not to think so.
Still he’d walk the shore, evenings, with his bulldog
––bowlegs working to keep pace,
darting to the foam-line, distracted by pleasure,
racing to catch up again, delay then hurry,
the creature performing a cheerful little drama––
and the poet, who could not be wholeheartedly pleased
with anything human, he liked that too.
From Deep Lane (Norton, 2015)