Sweet Machine: Poems

Rating:
Summary: Lovely as a Trinket in a Pawn Shop
Review: I find this collection to be one of Mark Doty's best. Although, I loved "Atlantis," many times I found it confusing. In "Sweet Machine," Doty evokes urban life clearly with eloquence and rich images. The last section of the book is fervent and memorable--exhaling the emptiness of sex, NYC life, and gay male angst in one breath. If you are searching for that readable, perceptive collection from a wise point of view, than this book is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Broken, the better to glitter
Review: Mark Doty is passionately in love with frivolity, and that is a good thing. In about half the poems in this book, he joyously celebrates the frivolous -- fleeting beauty, the unnecessary (but is it really?) the joy of delicacy and frailty. His style fits his subject well -- at times it feels light enough to simply float off the page, wisp away into nothingness. This book is beautifully lyrical, sweet and light poetry. Favorites are "White Kimono", "Lilies in New York", and, especially, "Messiah(Christmas Portions".

With that in mind, I think my favorite poems in the book come towards the end, when he settles down a bit. Maybe this is just more my style and sensibility. Either way, Doty shows hints of a great range and ability.

His form stays pretty constant -- short lines, grouped in threes, building 2-3 page poems that have both of the sense of being long and of flying by.

Here is a poet who loves language, and flaunts it -- and I mean that in the best way imaginable. While his work may not be incredibly important, thank God that not all good poetry has to be incredibly important. Here are poems of joyride and dance. Enjoy.

A sample poem:

CONCERNING SOME RECENT CRITICISM OF HIS WORK

--Glaze and shimmer,

luster and gleam,

can't he think of anything

but all that sheen?

--No such thing,

the queen said,

as too many sequins.

--

if you'd like to discuss these poems, or poetry, books, anything else with me, e-mail me at [e-mail].

Rating:
Summary: Immortal
Review: Rarely do you come across a poet able to maintain a voice as pure and frank as Mark Doty's. He approaches prevalent themes such as grief, loss, and love with enchanting diction, virtue, and elegance. Beyond his ability to achieve the perfect balance of lyric, image, narrative, mystery, and form, his unwavering beauty (I think) lies somewhere in the synergy of candor and compassion, as in the ending of one of my favorite poems (a direct-address to a lover who has passed and returns in a dream) "Bless you. You came back, so I could see you once more, plainly, so I could rest against you without thinking this happiness lessened anything, without thinking you were alive again." In short, his poems are brimming with that rare magic that make poets want to write.

Rating:
Summary: Lovely as a Trinket in a Pawn Shop
Review: The author seems bitten by some exotic bug. The text is both florid an prosaic, like passages from the Sears catalog. Even such ordinary subjects as getting crabs or donning a frightwig seem to become somehow more ordinary under the author's heavy hand. It's as if the author is not writing poetry at all.

Rating:
Summary: Doty casts his spell
Review: This is a beautiful book, full of poems that call the reader to be more fully human, more empathetic, more intelligent, more intensely alive. Doty is a writer's writer, in that his work sensitizes the reader to the magical powers of language as well as to the beauty and richness of the world he writes about with such passion. Thank you, Mark Doty!

Rating:
Summary: Doty casts his spell
Review: This is a beautiful book, full of poems that call the reader to be more fully human, more empathetic, more intelligent, more intensely alive. Doty is a writer's writer, in that his work sensitizes the reader to the magical powers of language as well as to the beauty and richness of the world he writes about with such passion. Thank you, Mark Doty!