We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear. — Mark Doty Copy Share Image
There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem. — Mark Doty Consent 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 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
“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
Sentimental assertions are always a form of detachment; they confront the acute, terrible awareness of individual pain, the sharp particularity of loss… — Mark Doty 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 Copy Share Image
The physical reinvention of the world is endless, relentless, fascinating, exhaustive; nothing that seems solid is. If you could stand at just… — Mark Doty Copy Share Image
Here and gone. That’s what it is to be human, I think—to be both someone and no one at once, to hold… — Mark Doty Attention 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
“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
“…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 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
