School of the Arts
eBook - ePub

School of the Arts

Mark Doty

Share book
  1. 128 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

School of the Arts

Mark Doty

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

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."

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on ā€œCancel Subscriptionā€ - itā€™s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time youā€™ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoā€™s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youā€™ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weā€™ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is School of the Arts an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access School of the Arts by Mark Doty in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literatur & Amerikanische Poesie. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Year
2009
ISBN
9780061877766

The Vault

And Craving said,
ā€¦Why do you lie, since you belong to me?
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
1. The Bootblack
What can be said of this happiness?
The bootblack boy on his knees
in the dim of the bar gives himself
completely to the work of polishing,
leaning into the body on the stool
before him, a shirtless and eager man
whoā€™s being mouthed clean.
Around them parts the human dark.
Not much to do with degradation;
the generous bootblack pours
his attention out of his body
ā€”all alertnessā€”into the presence
before him, up the legs, beautiful,
burying his face in the warm cloth
of the lap: completed, receptacle,
recipient, held, filledā€”
Though itā€™s hardly passive:
heā€™s working to relinquish,
giving the seated one pleasure,
releasing his own weight.
They seem to light the gloom
of their corner; together
they make one lamp. And as if
his work were not complete
until it had been seen by another
ā€”labor of the mouth,
art perfected with the tongueā€”
he turns his face up toward me,
his witness, smiling, though the verbā€™s
thin for this unshielded triumph
of a face: Whatā€™s he conquered?
Distance and dissatisfaction have slipped
from the look he lifts to me,
so that his power might not go
unacknowledged, now that
he is the image of achieved joy.
2. Double Embrace
Skin to the back of me,
skin to the fore,
and Iā€™m the center
of a double embrace,
or perhaps thatā€™s not
the precise term,
since no oneā€™s
face to face; we are
three shirtless men
become one
tentative whole,
the thick arms behind me
pressing against my arms,
then reaching forward
to the arms before me,
drawing us tighter together,
heat and slow
uprush of it; no hurry,
the embrace rocking
a bit, a bit of motion
to bind three disparate
bodies intoā€”Look what we can make!
Six arms snaking,
so that the darkened barroom
recedes, and the mirrors,
the pendant lanterns and bluish
video haze. Then the firm hands
kneading my shoulders, hands
over my heart, my hands
on the shoulders in front of me,
those arms reached back toward
the original arms, as though
we were the chain of generation,
each man proceeding from the one
before, and each also reaching
backward, into the body
which had borne himā€”
The barā€™s a cave of minor
miracle played outā€”
itā€™s not sex I want, if what sex is
is coming; more than that,
search and pleasure, reading,
divining signals, shift of attention,
flare in my direction, pose,
tattooed arms gleaming, hips
cocked in their particular invitation.
Particular! Weā€™re almost generalized
here, local avatars
of a broader principle,
we are just now representative men
doing the menā€™s work
ā€”fierce vulnerabilityā€”
open and containing, open
and held, the forward momentum
ceased, swaying a little, a...

Table of contents