My Alexandria

by Mark Doty

This is the first edition of one of the most highly praised and touching collections of poems to appear in recent years. In selecting it for the "National Poetry Series", Philip Levine 'The courage of this book is that it looks away from the miracle is that wherever it looks it finds poetry...Mark Doty is a maker of big, risky, fearless poems in which ordinary human experience becomes music'. Mark Doty, the recipient of a 1994 Whiting Writers' Award, is the author of two previous books of poetry, "Turtle, Swan" and "Bethlehem in Broad Daylight". He is winner the T.S. Eliot Prize, 1995; winner of a Whiting Writers' Award, 1994; winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; finalist, National Book Award, 1993; and, winner of the "L.A. Times" Book Award in Poetry.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Gay, 20th Century, Literature, Fiction

112 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Mark Doty is a poet, essayist, and memoirist. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Deep Lane and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award. He lives in New York, New York.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of poems had sat on my shelf for years waiting to be read. I'd heard that it referred to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. I thought I knew what it was about - on the cover of the book, the ruins, men sitting on great toppled stones, half broken walls rising above and pierced with holes for windows that looked on nothing. I was prepared for something painfully lovely, for words that enfolded and crushed until the chest ached. What I wasn't prepated for: snow.

...white cargo sifting
equally all night onto roofs
and lilacs, fenceposts and streets.
We're the shook heart of the paperweight,
the glass village falling forever
through the steady arms
of the snow, which touch us,
each pair, just once,
then let us go....

How many small perceptive moments these poems have - quiet, introspective, precise. There's grief here, terrible grief .. not a scream in darkness but instead an empty pair of jeans, dogs and cats that must be given up, a young woman in a hospital. The grief is genuine and felt, very affecting but far from hopeless. For example, this beautiful excerpt of "Night Ferry":

Twelve dark minutes. Love,
we are between worlds, between
unfathomed water and I don’t know how much
light-flecked black sky, the fogged circles
of island lamps. I am almost not afraid
on this good boat, breathing its good smell
of grease and kerosene,
warm wind rising up the stairwell
from the engine's serious study.
There's no beautiful binding
for this story, only the temporary,
liquid endpapers of the hurried water,
shot with random color. But in the gliding forward's
a scent so quick and startling
it might as well be blowing
off the stars. Now, just before we arrive,
the wind carries a signal and a comfort,
lovely, though not really meant for us:
woodsmoke risen from the chilly shore.

What a lovely book of poems this was! I wish I hadn't waited so long to read it.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving, considered meditation on loss and destruction written during the AIDS epidemic. Doty writes with generosity and affection, evoking a world that is vanishing all around him.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

On my wedding morning, my dog killed a small mammal. I was hiking with family, and I'll never forget the sight of the poor thing, bleeding on its back, struggling with what little life he had left. When I read Mark Doty's poem "With Animals," the moment of that morning came crashing down on me. The narrator had come upon a dog in the snow; it had been shot in the head and had thrashed on its back all night. "Something cleaves to form until the last minute, past it/ and though the vet's needle was an act/ of mercy, the life needed to continue,/ the life was larger than cruelty,/ the life denied the obliterating gesture/ where only kindness was expected."

When I read those lines I thought, I know what he's talking about; I have seen the life needing to continue. I hope the little animal I saw (I don't even know if it was a chipmunk, or something else) had a life that was larger than cruelty. I hope it on some level understood what a great service he did me, in his end and my beginning. I wonder, though, why he had to die for me to understand this?

[Alexandria · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good compared to the shit poetry I’ve been subjected to recently Iykyk. My favorites were No, Fog, esta noche, brilliance, night ferry, and lament-heaven. Also a fabulous title.

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorites:
-Days Of 1981
-Almost Blue
-Esta Noche
-Broadway
-The Ware Collection Of Glass Flowers and Fruit, Harvard Museum
-Difference
-To Bessie Drennan
-Brilliance

I’m in no way an expert reader of poetry so sometimes I miss any deeper meanings or metaphors in collections however what I do know it I really liked Mark Doty’s poems in this collection. I liked how illustrative and descriptive he was and the ranges in emotions I felt, from sadness to grief, to curiosity and observational.

[meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

really liked this. the wings, brilliance, and lament-heaven were some of the standouts; brilliance in particular is maybe one of my favorite poems I've ever read

[nkp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read one (1) poem by Mark Doty before this collection, which I thought was really good. Now that I have read many poems by Mark Doty, I still think he’s really good. Thank u to Sammy for making me read it and also lending it to me :)

[robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

clear and eloquent and immensely, terribly moving - siken-esque at times but there’s just something about the simplicity of these poems, the clarity of the language and the imagery and the quietly restrained emotion running beneath, that got to me in a really singular way. ‘fog,’ ‘brilliance,’ and ‘with animals’ in particular will be on my mind for a while i think

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Alexandria is an analysis of mortality as interpreted by a gay man living in the time of HIV/AIDS. Doty uses the physical world of objects and fabrics, music and art, architecture and antiques to explore what is permanent and what is temporary in life. As evidenced by the awards it received, this was a breakthrough collection for one of today's most important poets.

[Eva Forslund · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved this. probably could've given it five stars but didnt understand half of the English. "it's a white light, mom said, and this struck me as incredibly presumptuous, as if the light we'd all go into would be just the same. maybe she wanted to give herself up to indigo, or red. if we can barely even speak to each other, living so separately, how can we all due the same?" (pp 69)

my interpretation is that it's a lot about death. I love the way he rhymes things that doesn't actually rhyme, like seaside/season or dying/parents

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why have I not been reading more Doty? Such gracefully humane poems, which achieve the kind of acute emotional precision of a haiku but rather than condense themselves into a tiny space, unfurl in an expanding embrace.

[Eric Norris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this when it came out in 1993. Some of the poems are kind of pretty, like a rare orchid on the verge of rot.

[amanda :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

i normally don’t like poetry but loved this one!! so many amazing lyrics. a great find off the side of the road :3

[Spence · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Not perfect but about as close as it could be.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Doty’s memoir Heaven’s Coast, I was ready for his poetry, and I was prepared for them to be different, and they are, vastly different. The memoir showed me the thinking and feeling man; the poetry shows me the incredibly talented and intelligent poet. His poems capture what it means to be American, gay, mindful, and aware of social justice. They are beautifully American and capture the times without blame, bitterness, anger, hate. It reminds me of a poem of Adrienne Rich’s that made me think about my own patriotism for the first time, and a desire to “wrestle for the soul of my country.” This is what Mark Doty does: he witnesses the spirit and soul of his own country, through his own unique lens, and wrestles quietly and impressively for the soul of our country.

Flags are blossoming now where little else is blossoming
and I am bent on fathoming what it means to love my country.
The history of this earth and the bones within it?
Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule
fibre, one woman
like and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of
her task?
One citizen like and unlike so many, touched and untouched in passing…
A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot us one who wrestles for the
soul of her country
as she wrestles for her own being, for the soul of his country…”
― Adrienne Rich, An Atlas of the Difficult World,

A lot of reviews talks about this poems clanging quietly of doom, but I don’t see them that way. I see them as witnessing the complexity of sexuality, HIV, homelessness, urbanity, art, death: all serious, somber subjects and while there is no exuberance in the poems, there is not as much hopelessness as doom implies.

From The Wings:

“…When it’s all over
His parents awaken the sleeping reader;
His father’s brought a pair of snowshoes

Nearly as tall as the boy, who slings them both
Over his back and thus is suddenly winged.
His face fills with purpose;

The legendary heroes put away in his satchel,
He’s become useful again, he’s moved
Back into the world of things

To be accomplished: an angel
To carry home the narrative of our storied,
Scattering things.

Bill’s Story is about Bill’s sister who returns from Africa changed, and implies she came back with HIV and there was no word for it then, in 1978. The poem seems to mark, hallow, make us pause in this moment of history, but ends on a light note: their mother keeps telling her as she is dying she can go into the light, and Bill, annoyed like only a gay man can be, that she keeps saying it is a white light versus a more varied, diverse choice, says he would haunt her if she was like that with him. In Fog, he talks about the time after his love is diagnosed with HIV and how acutely aware of a nick while shaving, a cut while gardening, and compares it to the irises and tulips in his garden and how blood is like a garden and ultimately blood is a garden. How many people who are diagnosed can have a poem to hallow it like this, make it holy, make the terror manageable.

I liked the imagery of Becoming a Meadow, when he and his love are in a book store and he compares his terror of what the virus might be doing to his lover’s body to the meadow and how it “accepts itself as various, allows/some part of itself to always be going away, /because whatever happens in that blown//ragged field of grass and sway/ is the meadow…”

Lament-Heaven foreshadows his love’s death, and the memoir.
I can’t remember/even the melody, which doesn’t matter;/there’s nothing to hold/but the memory of the sensation//of such moments…answering the human cry/at the heart of the elegy./Oh why aren’t I what I wanted to be,//exempt from history?/The music mounts up,/assembles its architecture//larger than any of us/and doesn’t need you to continue./Do you understand me?//I heard it, the music/that could not go on without us,/ and I was inconsolable.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the cities about which Doty waxes lyrical in "My Alexandria" (New York, Boston, San Francisco, etc.) have already been eulogized to death; a devil's-advocate might even argue that you have to squint to see the resemblance between life in such sophisticated cities and life in, say, Middle America (much as I hate that Palin-popularized phrase!). Still, this is an admirably ambitious, and sometimes truly lovely, book. Doty likes to juxtapose two or more seemingly unrelated anecdotes within a single poem, in an attempt to wring a deeper resonance out of the juxtaposition; this technique works better in some poems than in others. I think the poet's at his best when he's contemplating some small, well-circumscribed natural object, such as a tortoise or a glass flower; in this collection, his lyrical gifts thrill me more than his narrative powers.

UPDATE, JULY 2010: The more I re-read the Cavafy-inspired poem "Days of 1981," the more I love it. I now believe it is the story of my life.

[Kristiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I’ve found a new, favourite poet in Doty’s work.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

I also zoomed thru sweet machine the night before my ecology exam,,, Doty is such a poet to watch. I am adoring him more & more & such a beautiful writer to teach oneself with. Doty is one of the most sensitive to life I've ever read. this is a POET who can SINK INTO the animal & not in what JB calls the suburban approach - AO; MO. This happens, excruciatingly, in With Animals, where Doty narrates finding a dog that's been shot in the head, and in the delightful poem No, which describes the reverie of children holding a tortoise: 'They know he makes night / anytime he wants, so perhaps / he feels at the centre of everything, / as they do.'

This is a collection which lingers on AIDS, Days of 1981 is gorgeous with this but it soaks everything. I really love Almost Blue, after Chet Baker, and Esta Noche, which is my favourite ! look at realism & Drag in poetry, I think. The last poem, Lament-Heaven, is indescribable. It whipped me away. This is a desolate poem, which asks:

isn't everything so shadowed
by its own brevity
we can barely tell the thing

from its elegy? Strip something
of its mortality, and how do you know
what's left to see?

It's sharp & wonderful,, but swerves and surges into a radical, transhuman sympathy with a small girl playing the violin: 'I would have lived in that music, / or rather it was as if I had been once / the cautious and splendid cascade from the violin'. Doty's is a poetics that nearly breaks me - alert to ,

the little human cry
at the heart of the elegy,
Oh why aren't I what I wanted to be,

exempt from history?

[Timothy Juhl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Doty is one of my poetry idols. I have been reading his work for more than three decades now. I have met him personally, and I have wrote to him in 2011 after reading his devastating memoir on grief following my own loss of my partner. He would later recall my letter a few years later when I met him at the AWP in Minneapolis. He is kind and brilliant and that he has not received a Pulitzer for his work is unthinkable.

'My Alexandria' was published in 1993, his third collection of poetry. Doty was already writing about the AIDS epidemic in other works, but this collection begins his exploration of the virus as it worked its way into his own home with the 1989 diagnosis of his long-time partner, Wally Roberts.

The visage of death is clearly haunting many of these poems and what I love about Doty's poetry is his keen ear for lyricism in creating a sense of mood that sometimes is deceiving as you discover the poem takes a different turn than those beautiful images and emotions seemed in the opening verses. Perhaps no better example of this is found in the poem "With Animals." Doty is master at his craft in this poem and when that turn comes it is so violent I had to stop for a moment and let my head wrap around what I was seeing.

I will never not tire of Doty's poetry, or his prose (Dog Years will leave you sobbing like a child). He has inspired me in my own poetry for years and will continue to do so.

[Atlantis Rises · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book when I was 13 years old. I knew next to nothing about the AIDS crisis at the time. My mother had just died of cancer. My father had also been ill. I found "The Embrace" (which I think is from Doty's book Turtle, Swan) in some poetry anthology and it hit me like a ton of bricks; it echoed back to me something so painfully and wonderfully close to my own grief and I had to get my hands on more of Doty's poetry immediately. My copy of My Alexandria went with me literally everywhere I went for years after that.

I was figuring out a lot of things about myself, and my queerness, and poetry, and illness, and what it meant to grow up too fast, and there, in the middle of everything, the grief and bleakness and sharp, paradoxical joy I found in this book were magnetic.

HIV/AIDS and cancer are very different, of course, and the loss of a parent is different from the illness and loss of a partner (and friends, and their partners, and too many people), but man, as a teenager, I needed this book. I needed art that understood the grief and the horror of being surrounded by illness and death, but also saw beauty and a future in a world that was very cold and very grey.

[Caleb Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I can’t say enough great things about Mark Doty’s poetry. So many times I had to stop, set the book down, and just let out a deep “fuck” from the sheer weight of Doty’s emotional language - which he accomplishes with such precise and deliberate scene work that you almost don’t realize how much he’s tangled himself into your heart strings until he pulls it pages of tercets and couplets and into a single, piercing line. This is one I’ll keep coming back to.

[Joseph Dante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Portraits of places and people, often from a bird's eye view. A distinct lack of "I," which is surprising for a poetry collection. A lot of sensory details and long descriptions of objects, especially flowers. This is all technically fine, but as a reader, I wanted more access to an interior, more subjectivity, more argument.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading My Alexandria for the first time in over twenty years, I'm still amazed by the beauty, insightfulness, and music of these meditative lyrics. Doty is a beautiful poet, and this book dazzles.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most influential books of poetry in my life. Doty writes about the loss of his partner, Wally, and it will move you beyond measure. Doty is never maudlin, though, and in spite of great loss, he is life-affirming. Brilliant.

[J.L. Huffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful series of treatises that meander through cities and countryside on the journey towards the death of a loved one. Not to be read hurriedly, the multiple pages which make up each poem's story are best taken in small bites, savoured, and swished before being swallowed.

[sbu_andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading poetry in the middle of a boring ass class and this was marginally better than learning about how to inspect a truck so 4 stars. Returning to Mark Doty and poetry itself after a long hiatus. Really fun and evocative and I felt cool reading it, then and now

[Sebastian]

First read: May 31, 2019, Friday

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do think this is well-written but they were not particularly interesting to me. It's good art, just not art for me.

[Jenna Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

wth

[Sita Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

poems were beautiful 💅🏽 Content sad 😿 (rip wally that’s actually so sad I could bawl my eyes out) but shout out to the drag queens he talked about 🕺🏽💃🏽