mark you this

Well, i promised to write about men, sometimes, just sometimes. So here's my first post about a man.

Mark Doty. Acclaimed gay American poet, chronicler of the AIDS plague, owner of one of the most beautiful voices on the face of this universe. His writing is luminous, lyrical - finds the luminous in the everyday, sings of the common life in the personal, idiosyncratic voice of a poet.

This site is probably a little more revealing than i'd feel comfortable about outside of cyberspace. Just from the things i rave about here, you, Gentle Reader, can probably figure out more about me than most of my colleagues have figured out, even after working with me for over five years. Anyway, so Mark Doty's poetry is luminous with the hidden meaning found beneath the surface of things, and i like that, because it appeals to my love for playful mystery, for hiddenness, for the elusive balance between the individual self and the larger community, for music in words and for words in music. My need to find inspiration in the ordinary, to find the abstract in the concrete, the universal in the particular. And i am drawn to his quest for redemption from the sullied-ness of life - but this redemption is something that is found in life, not outside it.

And, of course, my love for beautiful voices. Here's an interview i found online: all 47 minutes and 50 seconds of Mark Doty's beautiful voice, in conversation with other people.

Listen, my friends, and swoon.

[Half-hearted attempt to sound vaguely intelligent: It's a really good interview. He talks about the tradition he's building on, about what inspires his writing... One of these days i'll transcribe the interview and put it up here. In the meantime, you can all listen to his deeply swoonable voice.]
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And, here's one of his poems.


A Display of Mackerel

They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor,
and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other--
nothing about them
of individuality. Instead

they're all exact expressions
of one soul,
each a perfect fulfillment

of heaven's template,
mackerel essence. As if,
after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler's
made uncountable examples,
each as intricate

in its oily fabulation
as the one before.
Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe
of shimmer--would you want

to be yourself only,
unduplicatable, doomed
to be lost? They'd prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,
multitudinous. Even now
they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.
They don't care they're dead
and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,
they didn't care that they were living:
all, all for all,

the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming.


by Mark Doty
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