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"Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it." ~Mark Doty [] "I want what everybody wants,that's how I know I'm stillbreathing..." Mark Doty's poetry revolved around death and loss, but they are all based on love. The first American poet to ever recieve the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry was Mark Doty. Doty was born in 1953 in Maryville, Tennessee. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University. He then received his Masters of Fine Arts of Creative Writing from Goddard College in Vermont. Doty's mother was an alcoholic but very religious. His father was an army engineer and was always being transferred. Mark Doty was a poet that was very open about himself. **(FamousPoetsAndPoems.org)**His most recent collection is Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems in 2008, which received the National Book Award. In 1995, Doty wrote Atlantis, which received a Lambda Literary Award, the Bingham Poetry Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. He was elected to be an Academy Chancellor in 2011. One of Doty’s memoirs is called Firebird, which was about growing up different in the social world **(Poets.org)**. In his book, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, he tells people how we are not “born knowing how to love the world.” He has written twelve books of poetry and three memoirs. Doty wrote the poem, My Alexandria, in 1993, to express his experience of love, loss and care **(Bergman 2007).** __ [] __ __ The_Phoenix/Arts/Books/DOGS_MarkDoty_CreditKenneth.jpg __ ||  || Doty wrote about him being gay and suffering from the AIDS epidemic **(Bergman 2007).** Many of his poems are for the dying or the dead. Walt Whitman, an American poet, inspired Doty to write. When Doty was sixteen, he realized that "poetry might be a way to live." **(Squillace 2006)** His parents never accepted the fact that Doty was gay and as a result, he tried to comint suicide with sleeping pills at the age of fourteen.
 * Mark Doty **
 * [[image:DOGS_MarkDoty_CreditKenneth.jpg width="303" height="247"]]

Mark Doty's poems vary. Most of his poems are based on the dying, the dead, growing up different, being gay, and suffering from the the AIDS epidemic. (**Mark Doty and Michael Giltz 1999**) The theme of most of his poems is desire, love and loss. Doty write passionately about his feelings. "My Alexandria," is best know for its take on death and dying. "Firebird," tells the story of a gay boy's "messy" childhood. "Heaven's Coast," is complete with the beauty and cruelty of nature. **(Bergman 2007)** ||  ||


 * FAITH

"I've been having these awful dreams, each a little different,  though the core's the same-

we're walking in a field, Wally and Arden and I, a stretch of grass with a highway running beside it,

or a path in the woods that opens onto a road. Everything's fine, then the dog sprints ahead of us,

exicted; we're calling but he's racing down a scent and doesn't hear us, and that's when he goes

onto the highway. I don't want to describe it. Sometimes it's brutal and over, and others he's struck and takes off

so we don't know where he is or how bad. This wakes me every night, and I stay awake; I’m afraid if I sleep I'll go back into the dream. It's been six months, almost exactly, since the doctor wrote

not even a real word but an acronym, a vacant four-letter cipher

that draws meanings into itself, reconstitutes the world. We tried to say it was just

a word; we tried to admit it had power and thus to nullify it by means of our acknowledgement.

I know the current wisdom: bright hope, the power of wishing you're well. He's just so tired, though nothing

shows in any tests, Nothing, the doctor says, detectable: the doctor doesn't hear what I de,

that trickling, steadily rising nothing that makes him sleep all say, vanish into fever's tranced afternoons,

and I swear sometimes when I put my head to his chest I can hear the virus humming

like a refrigerator. Which is what makes me think you can take your positive attitude

and go straight to hell. We don't have a future, we have a dog. Who is he?

Soul without speech, sheer, tireless faith, he is that -which-goes-forward,

black muzzle, black paws scouting what's ahead; he is where we'll be hit first,

he's the part of us that's going to get it. I'm hardly awake on our mourning walk

-always just me and Arden now- and sometimes I am still in the thrall if the dream,

which is why, when he took a step onto Commercial before I'd looked both ways, I screamed his mane and grabbed his collar.

And there I was on my knees, both arms around his nieck and nothing coming,

and when I looken into that bewildered face I realized I didn't know what it was I was shouting at,

I didn't know who I was trying to protect." || media type="youtube" key="28AYjytJHvE" height="303" width="395" [] This is a video of Mark Doty speaking at Split this Rock.

[]

I feel that Mark Doty's poems have a unique style of writing. His style is very open and passionate. Most of his poems are of how he feels about this love life and love loss. In //My// //Alexandria,// Doty writes about his take on death. His lover from New York, Wally Roberts, died from HIV and this loss encouraged Doty to write more about death. []

In the poem "Faith," the character is having a bad dream about his dog getting killed. The man loved his dog dearly and was sadden when he was killed. After reading this poem, I realized that Mark Doty made the character lose a friend like Doty did when he lost Wally Roberts from AIDS.

Mark Doty has introduced a new type of contemporary for the world to read. His poems tell how nobody is perfect and how everyone has a problem in life. In Mark Doty's case, poetry helped him escape the evils of the world. ||

Work cited Poets.org. Academy of American Poetry, 1997-2011. Web. 5 March 2011.

Doty, Mark, and Michael Giltz. "This Boy's Life." //Advocate// (12 Oct. 1999): 78-79. Rpt. in //Contemporary Literary Criticism//. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 176. Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Literature// //Resource Center//. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.

Bergman, David. “Doty, Mark.” In Kimmelman, Burt, and Temple Cone, eds. //The Facts on File Companion to American Poetry//, vol. 2. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Web. 5 April 2011. []

"Mark Doty Biography." Famous Poets And Poems.com. Web. 6 Apr. 2006-2010. .

Squillace, R. (2006). Doty, Mark. In //The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry// (pp. 409-411). Westport, Connecticut: Greewood Press.

Doty, Mark, and Michael Glover. "Poetry, Mark Doty Says, Is the Only True Guarantor of Individuality." //New Statesman// 126.4336 (30 May 1997): 44-45. Rpt. in //Contemporary Literary Criticism//. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 176. Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Literature// //Resource Center//. Web. 7 Apr. 2011.