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Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails.

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Murano, a recent work by the distinguished American poet Mark Doty, is a contemplative meditation on human mortality and the mystery of artistic creation. Addressed to his late friend, the poet Lynda Hull, the musings in Murano are set against the backdrop of Venice and the glassmaker's art, as practiced for centuries on the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon.

This moving poem is illustrated with details of sixteen pieces of dazzling Murano glass from the collection of the Getty Museum. These fine, delicate objects paired with Doty's stirring words create an exceptional visual and verbal experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Inconsequential "gift" book.
I collect glass and books on murano glass.This book offers no new images or knowledge.It is not for the serious collector but would be fine to give a novice as a hostess gift, stocking stuffer etc.It is nothing more than a mere bagatelle.I would suggest paying more and buying a more useful book on the subject of Murano glass.

A Treasure Trove of Glass and Words
I believe that Mark Doty is one of the world's best poets, and have bought most of his books and memoirs.I bought this for my former wife as a birthday gift.She is not a poetry fan, but loves this book.She keeps it on the table in her waiting room with some other reading materials and tells me she has had eight or ten patients ask where they could buy the book. A treaure trove of stunning photographs and words side by side.Being a published poet, I would call Doty's words beautiful musings on the island of Murano, glassmaking and life.A little gem!

This Book Should Be Better
I'm not sure what to make of this little book. It is certainly printed well, a requirement for an art book. The closeups of the Murano glass are beautiful. I wish the smaller photographs of the same glass objects in the back of the book were bigger. I got no real impressionas to what the glass actually looked like. There must be bigger, more comprehensive books on Murano glass, if you cannot take a trip to the J. Paul Getty Museum, where these treasures are, or in the best of all possible worlds, go to Venice and Murano and see glass until you cannot look at another object.

The poem "Murano" though beautiful is not my favorite Doty poem. Written for his deceased poet friend Lynda Hull, the poem contrasts the permanence of Murano glass with the stench and death often associated with Venice. "Is this what becomes of art, the hard-won permanence outside of time? A struck match-head of a city, ungodly lonely in its patina of fumes and ash? Gorgeous scrap heap where no one lives, or hardly anyone."

There is no need to combine pictures and poetry. One usually dominates the other. First class poetry does not need to be illustrated. (I certainly think Mr. Doty is a first class poet; his poems often bring me much pleasure. I'm also of the opinion that poetry should be read, rather than explicated. The goodpoet always says what we cannot explain very well.)Fine art does not require commentary. Books like this are difficult to pull off and seldom satisfy completely. This one is no exception. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

one of many useful translations
"Nonce " doesn't need to wait for another poet to translate Rilke. There are already lots of superb choices, each of which lends a different quality to the work. What's best about these Poulin versions is their clarity. Stephen Mitchell has found a supple, authoritative voice for an American version of Rilke, and Edward Snow has done vivid and forceful translations, too, especially of the New Poems. Recently, the Scots poet Don Paterson has published some superb and muscular renditions of The Sonnets to Orpheus. There's no lack of Rilke to read, and readers who love poetry will probably want more than one version, to come closer to the intent of the poem.

Rilke's Poetry
From reading the previous review, I will make the assumption that the reviewer could read Rilke in German.This is not the case for me.It is strictly in the English that I enjoy him, and his "Duino Elegies" and "Sonnets to Orpheus" are both testaments to his poetic power.

I cannot comment on the fidelity of this translation, only that the poetry we get is breathtaking.Rilke is best at those phrases which make one stop and contemplate.Some lines from the book that struck me with their beauty, poetically and philosophically:

"Beauty's nothing but the start of terror we can hardly bear"

"Weren't you always
distracted by hope, as if all this promised
you a lover?"

"Isn't it time our loving freed
us from the one we love and we, trembling, endured."

"For there was one hour for each of you, maybe
less than an hour, some span between two whiles
that can hardly be measured, when you possessed Being.
All. Your veins swelled with existence.
But we forget so easily what our laughing neighbor
neither confirms nor envies.We want to make it
visible, even though the most visible joy reveals
itself to us only when we've transformed, within."

Again, I'm no German expert, and I've read other good translations of Rilke.Most will give you all of the "Duino Elegies" but only sections of "The Sonnets to Orpheus."This edition, being only these two sets of poems, lack other great poems by Rilke.That being said, the more good translations the better, and unless the translation is a travesty, poetically speaking (which it is not), then there is never a situation where Rilke should have 1 star.

Brilliant poem, horrible translation
The Duino Elegies is one of the most breathtaking turns of 20th-century poetry (I don't want to say "great" or "canonical" here) but it has suffered a long history of bad translations into English that push the agendas of translators over faithfulness to the text.You're better off finding an early translation than picking this up, at least until a (good) poet takes the project on--Jerome Rothenberg, where are you when we need you? ... Read more

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Mark Doty's last two award-winning collections of poetry, as well as his acclaimed memoir Heaven's Coast,  used the devastation of AIDS as a lens through which to consider questions of loss, love and identity.The poems in his new collection, Sweet Machine,  see the world from a new, hard-won perspective: A coming back to life, after so much death, a way of seeing the body's "sweet machine" not simply as a time bomb, but also as a vibrant, sensual, living thing.These poems are themselves "sweet machines"--lyrical, exuberant and joyous--and they mark yet another milestone in the extraordinary career of one of our most distinguished and accomplished poets. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Sweet Machine is not Sweet, it is bitter.
Sweet Machine has turned me into a black sheep. Either I have no taste or very bad taste or I felt off the planet when modern poetry came into the world. But Mark Doty is one of the most bloviating poets I have encountered. Not only his poems are verbose (anti-poetry, nonpoetry?, counterpoetry?, no?) but they are easily forgettable. Perhaps what contributes to his verbosity is his poetic language, which he seems to have plucked and pulled like dough from the gaudy doorknobs of history (particularly from the Byzantine Era). Also, he borrows a few commonly used nouns from Jorie Graham (like San Marco which I recalled from her Erosion collection). Though his poems are nothing near the sharp style of Jorie Graham. After reading his "Door to the River," which I thought was the only exquisite thing of his Sweet Machine collection, I couldn't remember what it was that I was reading.

However, let me be nice. Here is something beautiful, not verbose, that he has written:

"despite which the mouth of the flower/-quick and temporary as any gesture made by desire-"

Let me conclude this criticism: Reading Mark Doty poems is like having a visceral frontal lobotomy

Immortal
Rarely do you come across a poet able to maintain a voice as pure and frank as Mark Doty's. He approaches prevalent themes such as grief, loss, and love with enchanting diction, virtue, and elegance. Beyond his ability to achieve the perfect balance of lyric, image, narrative, mystery, and form, his unwavering beauty (I think) lies somewhere in the synergy of candor and compassion, as in the ending of one of my favorite poems (a direct-address to a lover who has passed and returns in a dream) "Bless you. You came back, so I could see you once more, plainly, so I could rest against you without thinking this happiness lessened anything, without thinking you were alive again." In short, his poems are brimming with that rare magic that make poets want to write.

Doty casts his spell
This is a beautiful book, full of poems that call the reader to be more fully human, more empathetic, more intelligent, more intensely alive.Doty is a writer's writer, in that his work sensitizes the reader to the magical powers of language as well as to the beauty and richness of the world he writes about with such passion.Thank you, Mark Doty!

Lovely as a Trinket in a Pawn Shop
The author seems bitten by some exotic bug. The text is both florid an prosaic, like passages from the Sears catalog. Even such ordinary subjects as getting crabs or donning a frightwig seem to become somehow more ordinary under the author's heavy hand. It's as if the author is not writing poetry at all.

Broken, the better to glitter
Mark Doty is passionately in love with frivolity, and that is a good thing.In about half the poems in this book, he joyously celebrates the frivolous -- fleeting beauty, the unnecessary (but is it really?) the joy of delicacy and frailty.His style fits his subject well -- at times it feels light enough to simply float off the page, wisp away into nothingness.This book is beautifully lyrical, sweet and light poetry.Favorites are "White Kimono", "Lilies in New York", and, especially,"Messiah(Christmas Portions".

With that in mind, I think my favorite poems in the book come towards the end, when he settles down a bit.Maybe this is just more my style and sensibility.Either way, Doty shows hints of a great range and ability.

His form stays pretty constant -- short lines, grouped in threes, building 2-3 page poems that have both of the sense of being long and of flying by.

Here is a poet who loves language, and flaunts it -- and I mean that in the best way imaginable.While his work may not be incredibly important, thank God that not all good poetry has to be incredibly important.Here are poems of joyride and dance.Enjoy.

A sample poem:

CONCERNING SOME RECENT CRITICISM OF HIS WORK

--Glaze and shimmer,

luster and gleam,

can't he think of anything

but all that sheen?

--No such thing,

the queen said,

as too many sequins.

--

if you'd like to discuss these poems, or poetry, books, anything else with me, e-mail me at williekrischke@hotmail.com. ... Read more

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The story of the acclaimed poet’s time with his two beloved retrievers — a poignant and perceptive meditation on life, death, and the nature of canine companionship. Dog Years is a classic in the making. ... Read more

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Word count: 2984. ... Read more

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This book explores diverse but complementary interdisciplinary approaches to the poetics, intertexts, and influence of the work of C. P. Cavafy (Konstantinos Kavafis), one of the most important twentieth-century European poets. Written by leading international scholars in a number of disciplines (critical theory, gender studies, comparative literature, English studies, Greek studies, anthropology, classics), the essays of this volume situate Cavafy’s poetry within the broader contexts of modernism and aestheticism and investigate its complex and innovative responses to European literary traditions (from Greek antiquity to modernity) as well as its multifaceted impact on major figures of world literature—from North America to South Africa.

Contributors include Eve Sedgwick, Helen Vendler, Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, Richard Dellamora, Mark Doty, James Faubion, Diana Haas, John Chioles, Edmund Keeley, Albert Henrichs, Kathleen Coleman, Gregory Nagy, Michael Paschalis, Peter Jeffreys, Diskin Clay, and Panagiotis Roilos.

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Divinity shown in desire, in human needs, resonates wonderfully through these pages; here belief in transcendence, in divine mystery, is possible even irresistible not in spite of, but particularly because of, the desire for belief, no matter how expressed. Here is an argument, in subtle, quiet, and gently elegant verse, for the paradise of the human. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Letras Libres, published by Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V. on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 691 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Las horas.(Poema)
Author: Mark Doty
Publication: Letras Libres (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V.
Volume: 6Issue: 61Page: 14(2)

Article Type: Poema

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more