Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight: TWO VOLUMES OF POETRY

by Mark Doty

The winner of four major awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize, Mark Doty has established himself as one of the most courageous and eloquent poets of our time. The University of Illinois Press is proud to present this one-volume edition of Doty's first two collections of poetry, "Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight". Long out of print, "Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight" brought Doty to critical attention as the first post-Stonewall gay poet to emerge as a major voice in American letters. Stories of paradise, pageant, and fugitive peace course through these pages are lit by Doty's visions of the architecture and artifice of a lush world. Exploring the forms of remembering and inventing, Doty affirms that, from the first loss, we preserve by naming.

Genres: Poetry, Queer

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 16, 1999

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

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doty transforms the personal into the universal like no one I know. He takes the historical and brings it alive. He takes the concrete, and in the flip of a word or phrase christens it metaphorical with skilled legerdemain. Because of this touch, his poems never age (if a poem can do such a thing), the subject matter and treatment always remaining fresh.

[Marjorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm coming to this collection with perhaps my expectations a bit too high. My last poetry collection, 400 pages of Seamus Heaney astonished me, not so much in the artful structure I expect from poems, but rather in Heaney's emotional wallop and his enormous lexicon of perfect words. I am glancingly familiar Doty's poetry having watched him read his poems (via Youtube) and I fell in love with his lyric voice in his braided memoir (prose), "What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in my Life." That is a sublime book! Additionally, this past week I attended a lecture by the Charlotte Poet Laureate, Jay Ward, in which he spoke about the volta and its importance in a poem. Since then, whenever I ahve encountered a poem, I am looking not only for the volta but what the volta is actually revealing. So it was with all this expectation that I read "Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in the Daylight," two volumes of Doty poems under one cover.

Doty's poems in this volume are good--several are excellent. They make an emotional impact, showcase his lyricism. They communicate an idea through a lens that probably most readers haven't looked through before. All really important poetic achievements. The volta in the sense Jay Ward was gunning for, mostly doesn't exist. There are some that have volta, a distinct turn in the subject matter of the poem, but even then I don't think the volta dropped a veil revealing to the reader some deeper universal meaning. That being said, I still found the poems impactful and worth reading.

I wish I had read the "Notes" before reading the poems. You can find Doty's notes on page 139, an unnumbered page at the end of the collection. In it he gives half a dozen backstories that really do shed a light on some of the more esoteric of his subjects. Still, having read those poems without his Notes, I found meaning in them. Again, props for that.

The two collections definitely have different tones. I surmise they were written at different periods in his life. The poems in Bethlehem in Broad Daylight seem to my untrained eye to be more sophisticated. My three favorite poems in this book were: "Harbor Lights," written about a residential hotel in which the personae lives; "Anna Karinina," a peek at a moment between the personae and his mother; and "Tiara," a snapshot of a queer life in the late 1980s which gutted me.

You will find wit and nature and love in these poems but they are not love poems, or nature poems, or clever, funny poems. These are glimpses of life's challenges through a chinoiserie, a kaleidescope of past 20th century decades. Many of his poems, while not epics, do span multiple pages.

This is more than a 3-star read for me, but doesn't quite reach 4-star status. I enjoyed meeting these people and seeing these moments so sensually, but I several times wanted to edit a poem or tweak an ending. I know, crazy. But that impulse held me back from giving more stars to this double collection. But I'm very glad to have read it. I hope you will too.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are so dense with meaning and atmosphere that they invite a person to linger in them for a long while. I especially loved "A Replica of the Parthenon," as I just visited the Parthenon in Nashville that he writes about. I also loved "Late Conversation," "Independence Day," "A Row of Identical Cottages," "An Exhibition of Quilts," "Art Lessons," and "Cemetery Road." Beautifully done.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I prefer his later books but there are still some incredible gems in these two and you can see how they lead to where they eventually do.

[Nicole Gervasio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This two-in-one volume is so much more than just a great deal. Seeing Doty read some of its many brilliant contents aloud at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival (on more than one occasion) remains one of few reading experiences that brought me to tears.

In particular, I remember the first visit to the Dodge Festival; I was in high school, gallivanting with friends from our literary magazine, which had funded our trip. It was raining torrentially against the giant tents that housed the stages.

I was only sixteen and was only just realizing my own sexuality. We also went to a Catholic high school, so I was predisposed to fearing my friends' reactions when I told them "what" I was.

One of those friends was present that day. When Doty read "Charlie Howard's Descent," she cried. And we talked about that poem for ages. And the compassion it rendered almost single-handedly changed her views on homosexuality. (And made it a lot easier for me to come out to her.)

So, it's personal, but that's the sort of power these poems have.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

After having read My Alexandria, it's hard to view anything by Doty without that as a lens. In these two books, there is a discernible progress towards My Alexandria. Bethlehem in Daylight, especially, has a way of weaving in the memories of his mother, with these truly tragic losses of friends. "A Box of Lilies" is absolutely superb and startling.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

So sad that you have to read it slowly. So beautiful that you have to cry.