Mark Doty

[bushleaguer]

Has anyone else read any of his work. Its a bit of a challenge, but always rewarding to me. Here's a link to a sample:

http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C07010074

[UNC95]

I have his book "source", and I haven't quite been able to make up my mind about him ... forced to pick thumbs-up or thumbs-down, I'd go thumbs-up, but when someone asks me who my favorite poets or influences are, his name never really crosses my mind ... it's hard to say exactly why I don't like the book more than I do -- the first time I read it, I really didn't care for it at all, but the second time, I found a little more I liked about it, but still something just didn't quite connect for me

I like his overall style and pacing, but there seems to be something about his word choice in a lot of poems that doesn't resonate with me ... lines like "this little archipelago's/flush chromatics require/sea-light on humid acres/sun-worried to fecundity/and decay" ("Watermelon Soda") and "everyone going somewhere certain/in the randomly intersecting flow/of our hurry, until you could be anyone" ("Manhattan: Luminism") seem either unnecessarily convoluted, as in the first instance, or a little too obvious, as in the second

of course there are lines like "Experience is an intact fruit,/core and flesh and rind of it; once cut open,/entered, it can't be the same, can it?" ("Source") and "Any kingdom's imagined,/must be, before it's inhabited" ("Hesperides Street") which I find to be very profound and concise

there's a tone through the book that I find to be somewhat exclusionary though and I think that's the main problem I have with it ... there are a few pieces I found very self-indulgent, like "Letter to Walt Whitman" and "Paul's Tattoo" (out of 23 poems, 2 are specifically about getting tattoos(!?), the other being "To the Engraver of My Skin" -- luckily they're among the shorter pieces) and some of the book is a little too relationship-oriented for my taste, which is a little unusual from a male poet (perhaps his sexual orientation has something to do with this, perhaps not) ... really, overall, I do like the book alright, it's certainly not the worst thing on my shelves, but it's not one of the ones I'd take to a desert island with me either

[HowardM2]

http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21503&poems

[bushleaguer]

That's a very insightful take on Doty, UNC. Yes, at times his work does have an exclusionary vibe to it. I read an interview he did one time, and he said that his word choice was intentionally complex, or difficult. He is at his best, in my opinion, when he writes about an object or a scene. He excels at imagery. The link to the essay (Thanks!) on his poem "A Display of Mackeral" is great. That poem is one of my all time favorites of his.
The one problem I have with his work is that he poses too many questions. I don't think a question left unanswered in a poem ever works, and he has a tendency to do that. Sometimes I find it refreshing to read a contemporary poet who isn't accessible on a first read. I have to read his stuff 2 or 3 times to get a good handle on things.