Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know. — Mark Doty Depression Copy Share Image
I want what everybody wants, that's how I know I'm still breathing... — Mark Doty Breathing Copy Share Image
We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear. — Mark Doty Disappear Copy Share Image
All my life I've lived with a future which constantly diminishes but never vanishes. — Mark Doty Constantly Copy Share Image
...in the face of all dangers, in what may seem a godless region, we move forward through the agencies of love and… — Mark Doty Agency Copy Share Image
There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem. — Mark Doty Consent Copy Share Image
Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that… — Mark Doty Business Copy Share Image
And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath. — Mark Doty Body Copy Share Image
“Does the poem reside in experience or in self-consciousness about experience?” — Mark Doty Poetry Copy Share Image
“(I know, lacquer and tumble and glow , burnished and fired and hazed ) it’s because what else Lord to wear? Every… — Mark Doty Fashion 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
... the attempt to render visual intricacy makes words feel unwieldy, like sacks of meaning that must be lugged into place, dragged… — Mark Doty Accurate Copy Share Image
Sentimental assertions are always a form of detachment; they confront the acute, terrible awareness of individual pain, the sharp particularity of loss… — Mark Doty Assertion 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
“under the radiant towers, the floodlit ramparts, must have wondered at my impulse to touch her, which was like touching myself, the… — Mark Doty Touching Copy Share Image
“Concerning Some Recent Criticism of His Work —Glaze and shimmer, luster and gleam; can’t he think of anything but all that sheen?… — Mark Doty Criticism Copy Share Image
Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah,… — Mark Doty Animal Copy Share Image
The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing,… — Mark Doty Aftermath 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
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
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
“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
Questions, inside the larger mystery of sorrow, which contains us and our daily transit, and is large enough indeed to contain the… — Mark Doty Brightness Copy Share Image
“After he died, there was a deep calm to his face; he seemed a kind of unfathomable, still well which opened on… — Mark Doty Aids Copy Share Image
I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ...and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful,… — Mark Doty Afternoon 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
“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
“…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
“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
“I used to walk out, at night, to the breakwater which divides the end of the harbor form the broad moor of… — Mark Doty American 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
“I am not, anymore, a Christian, but I am lifted and opened by any space with prayer inside it. I didn’t know… — Mark Doty Aids Copy Share Image
“But we have, if not our understanding, our own experience, and it feels to me sealed, inviolable, ours. We have a last,… — Mark Doty Aids Copy Share Image
