School of the Arts by Mark Doty
'When I say I hate time, Paul says how else could we find depth of character, or grow souls?' The darkly graceful poems in Mark Doty's seventh collection explore the ways in which we are educated by the implacable powers of time and desire. The world constantly renews itself, and the new brings both possibility and erasure. Given the limits of our own bodies, how are we to live within the inevitability of despair? This is the plainest of Doty's books, its language stripped and humbled. But whatever depths are sounded in these poems, their humane and open music sustains. Art itself instructs us. Lucian Freud's startling renditions of human skin, Virginia Woolf's ecstatic depiction of consciousness, Caravaggio's only too real people elevated to difficult glory - all turn the light of human intelligence upon 'the night of time'. Formally inventive, warm, at once witty and disconsolate, School of the Arts represents a poet reinventing his own voice at midlife, finding a way through a troubled passage. Acutely attentive, insistently alive, this is a book of 'fierce vulnerability'.
Mark Doty is one of the major figures in contemporary American poetry, and a new book from him is always an event -- John Killick * The North *
The American poet Mark Doty dissents from the assumption that a plain style is more truthful than an elaborate oneSome poets are hypnotised by language and get caught flat-footed, but Doty is witty and quick... Wonderful -- Alan Marshall * Daily Telegraph *
Bishop's influence is apparent in Doty's shape-shifting, peripatetic style, his careful accumulation of sharply observed detail. While Doty has inherited from James Merrill, he shares somethign of the Bishop/Moore fondness for eccentric syntax, as well as their strength of phrasing -- Catriona O'Reilly * Times Literary Supplement *
Doty’s is a land of plenty, his poems celebrate abundance -- Colm Toibin * London Review of Books *
The American poet Mark Doty dissents from the assumption that a plain style is more truthful than an elaborate oneSome poets are hypnotised by language and get caught flat-footed, but Doty is witty and quick... Wonderful -- Alan Marshall * Daily Telegraph *
Bishop's influence is apparent in Doty's shape-shifting, peripatetic style, his careful accumulation of sharply observed detail. While Doty has inherited from James Merrill, he shares somethign of the Bishop/Moore fondness for eccentric syntax, as well as their strength of phrasing -- Catriona O'Reilly * Times Literary Supplement *
Doty’s is a land of plenty, his poems celebrate abundance -- Colm Toibin * London Review of Books *
Mark Doty is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry and three memoirs. His many honours include the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, and, in the UK, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He is a professor at Rutgers University and lives in New York City.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224075183 |
| ISBN 10 | 0224075187 |
| Title | School of the Arts |
| Author | Mark Doty |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2005-03-17 |
| Number of pages | 112 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |