Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know. — Mark Doty Depression Copy Share Image
There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem. — Mark Doty Consent Copy Share Image
All my life I've lived with a future which constantly diminishes but never vanishes. — Mark Doty Copy Share Image
We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear. — Mark Doty Copy Share Image
“Though there's something more tender, beneath our vanity, our will to become objects of desire: we sweat the mark of our presence… — Mark Doty Desire Copy Share Image
... the attempt to render visual intricacy makes words feel unwieldy, like sacks of meaning that must be lugged into place, dragged… — Mark Doty Copy Share Image
One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the… — Mark Doty Ambition Copy Share Image
In Judith Barrington's striking collection, Horses and the Human Soul, human emotions come ushered and accompanied by animal companions, especially the horses… — Mark Doty Affection Copy Share Image
Questions, inside the larger mystery of sorrow, which contains us and our daily transit, and is large enough indeed to contain the… — Mark Doty Copy Share Image
“And something else, of course; there’s always more, deep in art’s pockets, far down in the chiaroscuro on which these foodstuffs rest:… — Mark Doty Art Copy Share Image
It's unsettling, to lose the safety of the familiar, even when what's disrupted is an ordinary routine. When I began this poem,… — Mark Doty Barbershop Copy Share Image
“I don’t know anything different about death than I ever have, but I feel differently. I inhabit this difference in feeling- or… — Mark Doty Death Copy Share Image
Being in grief, it turns out, is not unlike being in love. In both states, the imagination's entirely occupied with one person.… — Mark Doty Being in love Copy Share Image
“In the museums we used to visit on family vacations when I was a kid, I used to love those rooms which… — Mark Doty Death Copy Share Image
“What can I do but stand with my mouth open, no sound emerging? My lips move and I wave my arms making… — Mark Doty Faith Copy Share Image
“…There is some firm place in me which knows that what happened to Wally, whatever it was, whatever it is that death… — Mark Doty Contradiction Copy Share Image
“The state of mind above which my distraction floats like fog is suddenly perfectly clear, though the right word for it is… — Mark Doty Death Copy Share Image
“Because this painting has never been restored there is a heightened poignance to it somehow; it doesn’t have the feeling of unassailable… — Mark Doty Art Copy Share Image
