Discussion Questions
Works Cited
Breen, Margaret S. “Homosexual Identity, Translation, and Prime-
Stevenson’s Imre and The Intersexes.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 12, no. 1, 2012. Accessed 9 October 2016.
Doty, Mark. “Sweet Machine.” Sweet Machine, edited by Philip Levine,
Random House, 2012.
Doty, Mark. “Demolition.” My Alexandria, edited by Philip Levine,
University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Fellows, Will. A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture.
University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
Lowell, Robert. Essays on Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
"Mark Doty." Poetry Foundation. Poetry magazine, 2016. Web. 10 Oct.
2016.
Nelson, Elizabeth E. Mourning Loss: Community and Consolation in 20th
Century Elegy. MA Thesis. Georgetown University, 2008. Web. 10 Oct. 2016.
Preston, Dorine. The Ground so Far. University of Georgia Press, 2008.
Wunderlich , Mark. “About Mark Doty.” Ploughshares 25.1 (1999):
183-189. Web. 10 Oct. 2016.
1. Why do you think Doty keeps emphasizing the
moth-like appearance/qualities of the young man in "Sweet Machine"?
2. You may, or you may not agree with our argumentation. Do you consider the following excerpt from "Demolition" as evidence for our argument (that the building represents society)? Or maybe as evidence against our argument? Please explain.
3. Do you think Doty is able to succesfully capture the struggle of the homosexual community in his poems?
"Demolition"
"the single standing wall
seems Roman, momentarily, an aqueduct,
all that’s left of something difficult
to understand now."
- Building as metaphor for society
- The building structures represent the ideological structures of an unaccepting society (Nelson).
- Elegy to conservative society
"Sweet Machine" "Demolition"
- Mentions of homosexuality links both poems
“It’s strange how much more beautiful
the sky is to us when it’s framed
by these columned openings someone meant us
to take for stone.”
“atomized plaster billowing: dust of 1970’s
rooming house, this year’s bake shop and florist’s,
the ghosts of their sign faint above the windows
lined, last week, with loaves and blooms.”
“The intact facade’s now almost black
in the rain; all day they’ve torn at the back
of the building.”
“All summer, at loose ends, I've read biographies,
Wilde and Robert Lowell, and fallen asleep”
- Demolition
“to understand now, something Oscar
and Bosie might have posed before, for a photograph.”
- Demolition
“Whether implicitly or explicitly, he considers gay desires, intimacies, and communities often in light of their interplay with larger mainstream society. In so doing, he argues, via a kind of poetics of identity politics, it is precisely our otherness that makes us beautiful, memorable, beloved, vital, and fully human.” (Breen)
“unable to forget the vain and stupid boy
he allowed to ruin him.”
- Demolition
CONTENT
- About Doty
- Thesis
- "Sweet Machine" interpreted
- "Demolition" interpreted
- "Demolition" as answer to "Sweet Machine"
- Conclusion
- Questions
- Works Cited
"Sweet Machine"
About Doty
- Society is unacceptive of homosexuality
- Young man homosexuality
- Lyric
- Born in 1953 in Tennessee
- Complex, free verse poems about urban gay life
- Moved around a lot during his youth
- Married a woman at a young age
- After divorce Manhattan
- Master's degree in creative writing
- Wally Roberts
- Creative-writing teacher at University of Houston
Thesis
“The society being depicted by Doty in "Sweet Machine"
is falling apart in "Demolition".”
“We’re all on display in this town, sweet machines, powerless, consumed,”
"and all of us waiting for the local
watch, how can we help it? Crackhead,
somebody says, but it’s a whisper, a question,
and nothing answers our troubled fascination:"
“I am a sweet suck and fuck machine. Take me home.”
“The waistband up, sits down again,
And begins to writhe, palms roaming,
Uncontrollable, over his own face,
His close-cropped hair and ears,
Down to his flanks, hands disappearing
Inside the big jeans, scratching
And rubbing, until he collapses, exhausted,
Head hanging between his knees,"
“It's true the invitation was mostly to ourselves, and for a few good friends at the college where I taught, since we fit into our little Vermont town none too well; we were the only out gay male couple in the whole place, and though we were thoroughly accepted by the town’s liberal community (that overlayer of exiles which make Vermont culture tolerable) we were strange new creatures to the ur-layer of native Vermonters who made up the town’s human bedrock.” (Doty)
“Perhaps this is why the lyric was invented: to take us outside the chain of causality and thus deeper into the moment, when that host of
daffodils can gleam with a pure, purposeless life” (Doty)
Mark Doty