Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know. — Mark Doty Depression 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 Copy Share Image
We learn to treasure words that people call us; we learn to live by words that hurt. We cannot toss them aside,… — Mark Doty Dignity 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
“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
...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
We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear. — Mark Doty Disappear Copy Share Image
Grief does not seem to me to be a choice. Whether or not you think grief has value, you will lose what… — Mark Doty Allies 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
“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
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
“…I have fallen in love with a painting. Though that phrase doesn’t seem to suffice, not really—rather’s it that I have been… — Mark Doty Art Copy Share Image
“Desire I think has less to do with possession than with participation, the will to involve oneself in the body of the… — Mark Doty Desire 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
“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
“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
“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
