About this title: From Mark Doty, one of our finest poets, a delicate and sensual literary essay. Part memoir, part art history, part meditation, this hybrid volume uses the great Dutch still life paintings of the seventeenth century as a departure point for an examination of uestions about our relationships with things, how we invest them with human store, how ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780807066096ISBN:0807066095
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Beacon Pr
Date Published: 2002-01-19
ISBN-13:9780807066096ISBN:0807066095
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780807066096. read more
Edition: First Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press, Bossier City, Louisiana
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780807066096ISBN:0807066095
Description: Good. No Jacket as Issued. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Signed by Author BA6-A first printing trade paperback book signed by the author in good condition lightly curled, some stains, dog-eared pages, light discoloration and shelf wear. Satisfaction Guaranteed. read more
"Well, the Amherst English department is batting 1.000 right now...
Doty's a bloody genius. Too bad more authors don't adapt this 70-ish-page essay / narrative / philosophy / criticism format. It works well, much better than forcing an idea into some preconceived notion (with a corresponding length) of a proper novel or poem or whatever.
Tons of great quotations in the book, but you can't beat the last three pages, especially:
"What we are is attention, a quick physical presence in the world, a bright point of consciousness in a wide field from which we are not really separate. That, in a field of light, we are intensifications of that light."
""Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life - this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife - and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they would not, would not be, poised on the edge these things inhabit when they are represented. These things exist - if indeed they are still around at all - in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiting to be spoken. Single word that has been forming all these years in the light on the knife's pearl handle, in the drops of moisture on nearly translucent grapes: At the end of time, will that word be said?" (18-19)
I just finished teaching this one in my ongoing creative nonfiction workshop - and though it wasn't my favorite work of Doty's when it first came out, I think I've come to appreciate more of what he accomplishes here, esp. in terms of its sustainable structure, its away and back rhythm - but also (and moreso) in terms of the points he makes about the nature of seeing, the nature of silence, the passage of time, and the qualities of poetry. This book offers a useful model for studying longer essay structures, and the roles that narrative and inquiry can play in the form. It's delightful, surprising, and constantly reminding us of all that we've seen, and can continue to see."
"It's technically not poetry, but I think you get that magical convergence that Doty has in his longer poems, that deep implicit connection. And to what purpose? The domestic space. Starting with his own joyful connection to a specific still life painting he has seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Doty goes on to celebrate all of the spaces people important to him have created, even when that celebration leads to a reconsideration of painful loss."
"Quick, easy read. Kind of like being stuck inside someone else's head and hearing their rambling thoughts. At least his have a little more overall cohesion than mine!"
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