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
“And now, a heap of roses beside the sea, white rugosa beside the foaming hem of shore: brave, waxen candles… And we… — Mark Doty Flowers 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
“And, I think, this greening does thaw at the edges, at least, of my own cold season. Joy sneaks in: listening to… — Mark Doty Grief 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
Poetry is ... the physical enactment of a process of knowing by means of language. — Mark Doty Knowing Copy Share Image
“Does the poem reside in experience or in self-consciousness about experience?” — Mark Doty Poetry Copy Share Image
'Everything beautiful occurs when the body / is suspended,' Helena Mesa quotes a performance artist who hangs his own pierced body in… — Mark Doty Air Copy Share Image
Intimacy, says the phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, is the highest value. I resist this statement at first. What about artistic achievement, or moral… — Mark Doty Accomplishment 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 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'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
This is what history is: all those centuries of bodies, moving over these canals, twisting and blooming into life in these houses,… — Mark Doty Aging Copy Share Image
To choose to live with a dog is to agree to participate in a long process of interpretation, a mutual agreement though… — Mark Doty Agree Copy Share Image
It's freeing, to think that there's always an aspect of us outside the grasp of speech, the common stuff of language. — Mark Doty Aspect 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
I want what everybody wants, that's how I know I'm still breathing... — Mark Doty Breathing 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
All my life I've lived with a future which constantly diminishes but never vanishes. — Mark Doty Life Copy Share Image
Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it. — Mark Doty Gateways Copy Share Image
