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Modern Poetry:Mark Doty
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Modern Poetry:Mark Doty
By: Dan Jin
Analysis of Tiara
Title: I predict that the poem will be about a young girl
Paraphrase: Doty tells a literal story. The poem is about his late partner that died from AIDS.
Connotation: Imagery of Heaven
Attitude/Tone+Shifts: First starts off laid-back and casual. But tone shifts when Doty tells about the people that blamed Peter's death on himself. Finally, tone becomes softer as Doty explains why desire supercedes safety in human nature. He comes to accept Peter's death.
Title: Doty uses the title because of the way his lover used to cross dress. This poem is dedicated to his death.
Theme: Doty expresses his coming to accept Peter's death as something inherently beautiful. He explains the beauty in falling to desires.
Tiara
ravishing music of their hurry.
I think heaven is perfect stasis
poised over the realms of desire,
where dreaming and waking men lie
on the grass while wet horses
roam among them, huge fragments
of the music we die into
in the body’s paradise.
Sometimes we wake not knowing
how we came to lie here,
or who has crowned us with these temporary,
precious stones. And given
Peter died in a paper tiara
cut from a book of princess paper dolls;
he loved royalty, sashes
and jewels. I don’t know,
he said, when he woke in the hospice,
I was watching the Bette Davis film festival
on Channel 57 and then—
At the wake, the tension broke
when someone guessed
the casket closed because
he was in there in a big wig
and heels, and someone said,
the world’s perfectly turned shoulders,
the deep hollows blued by longing,
given the irreplaceable silk
of horses rippling in orchards,
fruit thundering and chiming down,
given the ordinary marvels of form
and gravity, what could he do,
what could any of us ever do
but ask for it.
You know he’s always late,
he probably isn’t here yet—
he’s still fixing his makeup.
And someone said he asked for it.
Asked for it—
when all he did was go down
into the salt tide
of wanting as much as he wanted,
giving himself over so drunk
or stoned it almost didn’t matter who,
though they were beautiful,
stampeding into him in the simple,
The Work of Mark Doty
The Life of Mark Doty
-Themes: Transcending suffering, personal loss, overcoming adversity, sexuality, etc.
-Symbols: Death, nature, spirituality.
-Forms: Free verse
-Works:
Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems
School of the Arts
Sweet Machine
Atlantis
My Alexandria
Bethlehem in Broad Daylight
Turtle, Swan
- Born in Maryville, Tennessee
- 60 years old (8/10/1953)
- Earned Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa
- Obtained Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.
- Has taught at Cornell, NYU, Columbia, Princeton, and etc.
- Currently Professor and writer-in residence at Rutgers University.