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FIREBIRD. A MEMOIR
Firebird : Memoir by Mark Doty. Perennial Library,1999
Paperback
First published September 22, 1999
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About the author
Mark Doty
89 books338 followersMark 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.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 52 reviews
July 15, 2012
Childhood's work is to see what lies beneath. (p.28)
I have a thing for dysfunctional-childhood-fucked-up-parents memoirs. Mark Doty doesn't so much write about his harrowing childhood story as he paints it on a canvas, the prose as swirling and mystical as Van Gogh's Starry Night, the pain piercing and sharp. As a poet his writing is lyrical and rich and deeply moving.
What was it like to be a child in the 50's and 60's? A child of terrible parents? A child who's gay in the 50's and 60's and who has terrible parents?
I was a child of the 80's. I'm a girl. I'm straight. Yet so much here spoke to me. So much. The isolation of childhood, the confusion, the anxiousness, it's captured and presented so beautifully.
A mother swinging the pendulum of mental illness and alcoholism, delusion and destruction: My relationship with my mother is immense to me, and occupies so much space I can barely see around it. (p.19)
A father living in a bubble: He's a force on the horizon, but a distant one, like the sort of storm you see in the Midwest, visible across uncountable acres of cornfields. Maybe it will sweep in and give you trouble but probably not, not often. (p.20)
A troubled sibling: But of course there's a wedding picture, and it's here my sister's eyes exactly mirror my mother's, in that long-ago wedding portrait: these eyes said, these girls knew what they were doing, these girls married to get out. (p.43)
Wonderful writing.
I have a thing for dysfunctional-childhood-fucked-up-parents memoirs. Mark Doty doesn't so much write about his harrowing childhood story as he paints it on a canvas, the prose as swirling and mystical as Van Gogh's Starry Night, the pain piercing and sharp. As a poet his writing is lyrical and rich and deeply moving.
What was it like to be a child in the 50's and 60's? A child of terrible parents? A child who's gay in the 50's and 60's and who has terrible parents?
I was a child of the 80's. I'm a girl. I'm straight. Yet so much here spoke to me. So much. The isolation of childhood, the confusion, the anxiousness, it's captured and presented so beautifully.
A mother swinging the pendulum of mental illness and alcoholism, delusion and destruction: My relationship with my mother is immense to me, and occupies so much space I can barely see around it. (p.19)
A father living in a bubble: He's a force on the horizon, but a distant one, like the sort of storm you see in the Midwest, visible across uncountable acres of cornfields. Maybe it will sweep in and give you trouble but probably not, not often. (p.20)
A troubled sibling: But of course there's a wedding picture, and it's here my sister's eyes exactly mirror my mother's, in that long-ago wedding portrait: these eyes said, these girls knew what they were doing, these girls married to get out. (p.43)
Wonderful writing.
May 17, 2024
A very readable book, exploring Doty's childhood as a young, queer man in the 1950s and 60s. Coming from an unstable home, Doty is shuttled from place to place, as his mother spirals into alcoholism. While the prose here is vivid and compelling, the important parts of the story don't properly begin until the last 50 pages or so. Up until that point, the book is entertaining, but those last pages are really spectacular. I wonder did the book really need the first 160 pages to get there? I'm not convinced.
June 7, 2012
Five-stars for Doty's storytelling skills - he picks just the right vignettes, coming across as meaningful, but never saccharine. And it's not just a gay story either, but one about not fitting in, either in the outside world, or inside his nuclear family's (growing) dysfunction. I suppose if I had a quibble it would be that I didn't care for his discussion of drug use late in the book, but his life was what it was.
Highly recommended
Highly recommended
August 8, 2021
I wasn't caught up in this memoir at first. Then I finished it on a plane from Reno to Atlanta (heading eventually to my home in Wyncote PA. That unfolding of the book undid me...as a child and sibling with painful family stories, as a writer, as someone who also believes that poetry can redeem our lives. That the act of making--art, poetry, gardens...is what saves us and our imperfect lives. I have quotations I want to save. I'll be back with them.
August 24, 2024
So so so so so amazing. I read this at the start of the summer at the lake, and I can't stress enough how beautiful and vulnerable his writing is. Mr. Chard recommended this (he said it's one of his favorite memoirs ever), so no surprise I loved it.
March 7, 2008
In a strange twist of time and space, Mark Doty and I have lived parallel lives. The details are slightly different, but the characters and life lessons are all identical. Our mother is the “dominant emotional figure” in our shared life. She is prone to depressive episodes, but we are still drawn to her because she has “legitimate access to the stuff of craft, the tools with which beauty is made” (49). Our father is a vague figure of authority who, in retrospect, we “do not think…wanted to be far away from [us], but somehow he’s resolutely unavailable, the life of feeling sealed away in him, nearly impossible to reach” (113). We even share an older wayward sister who manages to escape the household long before us, but is still haunted by its influence. There’s only one twist: it’s my father, not my mother, who turns to alcohol to medicate himself; but still, this self-destructive behavior makes both of us lose a parent in our early twenties. As I read through this alternate universe of events, I was comforted at first by the fact that these similar circumstances drew us both to poetry. In a way, it legitimizes my chosen path and the tacit desire to express myself that led me to it, which was not unlike the feeling of coming out as a gay man. At the same time, it’s harrowing to think that maybe my place in the literary world is already filled. What experience can I cull from this analogous existence that Mr. Doty hasn’t already covered with a grace and eloquence that is still developing in me? Yet, by the end of the book, I was inspired to plug on, if for no other reason than to keep rising, like the firebird Doty compares himself to, out of my history, so I can “live the stories [I] tell” and not let “the stories [I] don’t tell live [me]” (183).
Overall, I am so glad to have finally read this memoir, both for its eerie correspondence with my life and its highly evolved style. It is a great example of the power of writing and its ability to show us how no pain, no experience is “ever quite as unique as our shame and sorrow would have us think” (183). We are not alone and the world of art is always there to prove this to us.
Overall, I am so glad to have finally read this memoir, both for its eerie correspondence with my life and its highly evolved style. It is a great example of the power of writing and its ability to show us how no pain, no experience is “ever quite as unique as our shame and sorrow would have us think” (183). We are not alone and the world of art is always there to prove this to us.
April 22, 2018
How well do we know others? Our family, our friends, ourselves? How do we perceive each of these? Through a glass, darkly, or through a perspective box, in a way like an artist. From the opening page of Mark Doty's poetic memoir, Firebird, the theme of art is present.
First it appears in a description of the famous "perspective box" of the Seventeenth-century Dutch painter Samuel Van Hoogstraten. Then as the narrative continues the artistic view and way of life is a theme that provides a way to understand the many colors of Mark's life from his early years to his middle age. He says that "I believe that art saved my life." Whether in the fourth-grade art class or when his poetry first received professional recognition from the surrealist poet who gives of himself to a shy young teenage poet; introducing him to the world of poetry and to an artistic family that, like Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera provides a haunting image of what a family could be but his is not.
It is his family that provides much of the drama of this portrait of a young artist, with a passive/aggressive father who cannot hold on to a job and insists on denuding a teenage Mark's head of its long hair or his mother whose addictive personality leads to storms of emotion so harsh and frequent that Mark "can feel when the storms are brewing" and makes himself scarce, exploring various methods of easing his tension from hashish to transcendental meditation.
I was moved by his gradual recognition and acceptance of his sexuality and the blooming of the artist that would eventually win prizes for his poetry. He withstood the fire of the pressures from his family and grew into a successful artist and firebird who watches his own life emerge like a dream from the elements that made it his own.
First it appears in a description of the famous "perspective box" of the Seventeenth-century Dutch painter Samuel Van Hoogstraten. Then as the narrative continues the artistic view and way of life is a theme that provides a way to understand the many colors of Mark's life from his early years to his middle age. He says that "I believe that art saved my life." Whether in the fourth-grade art class or when his poetry first received professional recognition from the surrealist poet who gives of himself to a shy young teenage poet; introducing him to the world of poetry and to an artistic family that, like Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera provides a haunting image of what a family could be but his is not.
It is his family that provides much of the drama of this portrait of a young artist, with a passive/aggressive father who cannot hold on to a job and insists on denuding a teenage Mark's head of its long hair or his mother whose addictive personality leads to storms of emotion so harsh and frequent that Mark "can feel when the storms are brewing" and makes himself scarce, exploring various methods of easing his tension from hashish to transcendental meditation.
I was moved by his gradual recognition and acceptance of his sexuality and the blooming of the artist that would eventually win prizes for his poetry. He withstood the fire of the pressures from his family and grew into a successful artist and firebird who watches his own life emerge like a dream from the elements that made it his own.
April 26, 2010
Doty's prose is amazing -- like overly rich chocolate. You have to read it through slow. You have to be an ent when you read this thing, or you'll miss something important.
Though I empathize with the troubles Doty faced growing up - prejudice, discrimination, and some very troubling parents (to make the understatement of the year), I am somewhat troubled by how he resolved those issues, especially with the archetypal Mother figure embodied by the Virgin towards the end of the memoir.
Still, the language, the prose, the over all message he was conveying definitely made it worth the read. He is a brilliant writer.
Though I empathize with the troubles Doty faced growing up - prejudice, discrimination, and some very troubling parents (to make the understatement of the year), I am somewhat troubled by how he resolved those issues, especially with the archetypal Mother figure embodied by the Virgin towards the end of the memoir.
Still, the language, the prose, the over all message he was conveying definitely made it worth the read. He is a brilliant writer.
July 3, 2007
This book is so lovely but was so hard for me to read. Doty's experiences resemble mine as a queer kid. I, too, dances around in "Husky Boy" jeans before I learned shame.
I'm reading again the scene in which he goes to a doctor he's never met to ask for a note to get out of PE. He tells the doctor that he needs to be excused because he is homosexual and "'can't handle being in PE.'" The doctor writes the note, and I can feel Doty's relief. Even though I had to suffer through PE, I'm so happy for him I could cry.
I'm reading again the scene in which he goes to a doctor he's never met to ask for a note to get out of PE. He tells the doctor that he needs to be excused because he is homosexual and "'can't handle being in PE.'" The doctor writes the note, and I can feel Doty's relief. Even though I had to suffer through PE, I'm so happy for him I could cry.
January 10, 2015
Doty is fabulous. His training and practice as a poet mean that he creates beautiful, powerful prose. The Firebird, the ballet, is a controlling metaphor for much of the book. A product of his own creative powers, the Firebird is an image his mother eschews when she sees him dancing to the music of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, hissing,
“Son, you’re a boy” (101).Out of the specific the universal is born.
April 21, 2019
Boxed In
(A personal reflection on Firebird)
The prelude to Mark Doty’s Firebird was difficult for me to understand. Why was he writing about a piece of art in what was supposed to be a memoir? About half-way through it, I had to go back and start over, certain I was missing something. But no, it was a description of his experience looking at one, particular piece of art, which, I suppose is a mini-memoir in itself. This prelude was an analysis of the Perspective Box.
I mentally set the odd introduction aside as I continued on to Chapter One, but it wasn’t until I reached the last chapter that I understood. From there, I went back through, chapter by chapter and adjusted my lens. Chapter Two, includes a description of a framed photograph of Doty’s mother. Here the frame is a box in which the vision of his mother is distorted. He has to look closely to see that the outward appearance is a façade.
Here is the source of the particular intensity with which she commands the frame: her smile and her eyes don’t quite align, the dazzle of one just so subtly opposing the depth of the other . . . something withheld, not yet available to us? Something, unlike that smile, which is unwilling, unready to be known. (41)
In Chapter Three, Doty discusses a movie he’s seen as a boy, in a theater by himself. Both the movie plot and the theater echo the idea of a box that contains something more, or other, than expected at first glance. Even his box of candy is not what it appears.
I like having a full box of something in my lap – Jujubes (the fruit flavors on the edge of bitter, and they stick to your teeth annoyingly, but they last a long time). Hard dollops of Milk duds, only glancingly chocolate. It doesn’t matter; what one wants is the satisfaction of something to suck until the absorption in the film takes over. (46)
This box of theater itself might be a foggy time machine, or Samuel Von Hoogstratren’s perspective box, a distortion of light, and surely, it must be a distortion . . . the strange film which makes little sense, and the boy who is too young to be here alone with his box of candy . . . (48)
It seems like I should have picked up on this obvious thread, but I was so consumed with the story, I couldn’t see the individual elements – exactly the kind of distorted view that Doty is trying to warn us about. But in Chapter Five, he finally reached me in my disconnect. The message is this: we all l live in a perspective box; each of us seen in a distorted half-light until someone gets close enough to look through the lens.
It is the firebird, after all, no longer a hide-and-seek flitting in the trees but who he always was, beneath the scorch and the ashes, beneath the ordinary ugly body in which he has been disguised, under the shame he’s worn like a cloak, under the misunderstandings and the knowledge that he can’t be who they want, that they do not want who he is. (81/82)
Doty goes on to use this analogy of distortion in talking about what we see and understand as children. He addresses his parents’ fighting, sometimes violent, as another thing to be viewed through a different lens.
They break a big kidney-shaped ashtray, its aqua glaze flecked with gold; they shatter a lamp. More dangerously, things seem broken on the inside, aswirl, destabilized. (92)
In succeeding chapters, he speaks alternately about attempting to change the way others see him, and attempting to change his own perspective of the world and his place in it. Losing an angry battle to keep his long hair leads to a suicide attempt, while spending a few dollars on a new outfit causes him to feel transformed. And still, the world is not quite right – not in alignment for young Doty.
He describes efforts with alcohol and drugs, transcendental meditation, even of his spirit leaving his body to place himself accurately in a world that seems warped. There were several of these instances and episodes I felt a particular connection to:
I can lose myself in a little song of my own making, and not think. (106)
I am, myself, a walking example of contradictory forces badly held within one troubled, adolescent frame. (119)
Constantly spinning, turning, trying to change himself and the way he sees or is seen in the world is the theme of Doty’s growing up years, as it is for many of us. But it isn’t until his Fanfare & Finale that I finally get it. Here in his concluding remarks, Doty returns fully to the Perspective Box of the prelude. As with Hoogstraten’s box, Doty’s memoir has two lenses; one on each end. He concludes with a final revelation.
What happened defines us, always; erase the darkness in you at your own peril, since it’s inextricable at last from who you are.
And who are you, anyway – with the shadow you also carry, because you are your parents’ son – who are you to forgive? They were nearly helpless, as people are; they did what they knew how to do, under the disfiguring pressure of circumstance. (194)
Using his own life as the portrait, Doty teaches the lesson of the perspective box: there is always a personal choice to make. Which lens will I view life through today? How will I choose to look at those around me – at those who have hurt me? How will I choose to look at myself? Distortion, after all, is only a matter of perspective.
(A personal reflection on Firebird)
The prelude to Mark Doty’s Firebird was difficult for me to understand. Why was he writing about a piece of art in what was supposed to be a memoir? About half-way through it, I had to go back and start over, certain I was missing something. But no, it was a description of his experience looking at one, particular piece of art, which, I suppose is a mini-memoir in itself. This prelude was an analysis of the Perspective Box.
I mentally set the odd introduction aside as I continued on to Chapter One, but it wasn’t until I reached the last chapter that I understood. From there, I went back through, chapter by chapter and adjusted my lens. Chapter Two, includes a description of a framed photograph of Doty’s mother. Here the frame is a box in which the vision of his mother is distorted. He has to look closely to see that the outward appearance is a façade.
Here is the source of the particular intensity with which she commands the frame: her smile and her eyes don’t quite align, the dazzle of one just so subtly opposing the depth of the other . . . something withheld, not yet available to us? Something, unlike that smile, which is unwilling, unready to be known. (41)
In Chapter Three, Doty discusses a movie he’s seen as a boy, in a theater by himself. Both the movie plot and the theater echo the idea of a box that contains something more, or other, than expected at first glance. Even his box of candy is not what it appears.
I like having a full box of something in my lap – Jujubes (the fruit flavors on the edge of bitter, and they stick to your teeth annoyingly, but they last a long time). Hard dollops of Milk duds, only glancingly chocolate. It doesn’t matter; what one wants is the satisfaction of something to suck until the absorption in the film takes over. (46)
This box of theater itself might be a foggy time machine, or Samuel Von Hoogstratren’s perspective box, a distortion of light, and surely, it must be a distortion . . . the strange film which makes little sense, and the boy who is too young to be here alone with his box of candy . . . (48)
It seems like I should have picked up on this obvious thread, but I was so consumed with the story, I couldn’t see the individual elements – exactly the kind of distorted view that Doty is trying to warn us about. But in Chapter Five, he finally reached me in my disconnect. The message is this: we all l live in a perspective box; each of us seen in a distorted half-light until someone gets close enough to look through the lens.
It is the firebird, after all, no longer a hide-and-seek flitting in the trees but who he always was, beneath the scorch and the ashes, beneath the ordinary ugly body in which he has been disguised, under the shame he’s worn like a cloak, under the misunderstandings and the knowledge that he can’t be who they want, that they do not want who he is. (81/82)
Doty goes on to use this analogy of distortion in talking about what we see and understand as children. He addresses his parents’ fighting, sometimes violent, as another thing to be viewed through a different lens.
They break a big kidney-shaped ashtray, its aqua glaze flecked with gold; they shatter a lamp. More dangerously, things seem broken on the inside, aswirl, destabilized. (92)
In succeeding chapters, he speaks alternately about attempting to change the way others see him, and attempting to change his own perspective of the world and his place in it. Losing an angry battle to keep his long hair leads to a suicide attempt, while spending a few dollars on a new outfit causes him to feel transformed. And still, the world is not quite right – not in alignment for young Doty.
He describes efforts with alcohol and drugs, transcendental meditation, even of his spirit leaving his body to place himself accurately in a world that seems warped. There were several of these instances and episodes I felt a particular connection to:
I can lose myself in a little song of my own making, and not think. (106)
I am, myself, a walking example of contradictory forces badly held within one troubled, adolescent frame. (119)
Constantly spinning, turning, trying to change himself and the way he sees or is seen in the world is the theme of Doty’s growing up years, as it is for many of us. But it isn’t until his Fanfare & Finale that I finally get it. Here in his concluding remarks, Doty returns fully to the Perspective Box of the prelude. As with Hoogstraten’s box, Doty’s memoir has two lenses; one on each end. He concludes with a final revelation.
What happened defines us, always; erase the darkness in you at your own peril, since it’s inextricable at last from who you are.
And who are you, anyway – with the shadow you also carry, because you are your parents’ son – who are you to forgive? They were nearly helpless, as people are; they did what they knew how to do, under the disfiguring pressure of circumstance. (194)
Using his own life as the portrait, Doty teaches the lesson of the perspective box: there is always a personal choice to make. Which lens will I view life through today? How will I choose to look at those around me – at those who have hurt me? How will I choose to look at myself? Distortion, after all, is only a matter of perspective.
July 14, 2010
A depiction of a major poet as a child tap dancing on dexidrine trying to please his mother is an image we all might do well to contemplate.
May 4, 2022
Zero stars--one of the worst-written memoirs ever. Not worth a penny and I was dumb enough to pay for it, then threw it in the trash when done.
Mark Doty doesn't know how to write or tell a story. This account of his younger years is told in distorted prose that gives glimpses of his half-memories and states as fact things from his childhood are impossible for him to have recalled in such detail. You keep waiting for something to happen, but nothing really does--it's filled with the mundane fictionalized with creative writing. It has a few glimpses of what he claims are his longings for other men, yet there is no culmination and just when he gets to something significant in his life he choose to skirt the entire story. At some point someone in his house has a gun and points it at another, but it's so confusing due to his poor storytelling and his admitted bad memory that I have no idea what really happened.
It's all like a bad Wikipedia entry, at less than 200 small pages. Speaking of which--if you look at his Wikipedia bio it fails to mention significant things, like his marriage to a woman for like eight years that is only alluded to in a couple book sentences or his constant moves around the country. How in the world did this guy who lived in a different city every year and then left home in Arizona at age 14 for San Francisco (which his stupid parents allowed) end up going to Des Moines for college? Did he ever graduate high school? How was he legally allowed to marry at age 17? These and many other questions go unanswered in this lame book.
He also appears to have no real morality. Oh, he includes a few pious references to his church attendance and begrudging prayer life, but it's never serious and he does state that he's unclear whether he believes (again skirting any true self-exposure). What he defines as a moral issue is supporting grape workers, but he doesn't consider abortion a moral question at all and thinks nothing of his trashy sister getting one.
There's nothing sexual in this book and I have no idea how or when he consummated his gay sexuality or met his adult boyfriend. He doesn't tell. Isn't that what a queer memoir is supposed to do?
Ironically he states that his favorite tabloid book was called That Special Summer, a gay porn novel for which he praises its "prose style." That alone should let you know what his writing standards are.
He says, "A writer I know says 'Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what.'" Then why in the world didn't this guy say anything clearly? Instead we get diversion tactics where he avoids really letting us into his life. The wall is too high up, and this is written decades after he supposedly embraced his homosexuality.
He also says, "To tell a story is to take power over it." Well he then is powerless. There is almost no story here, beyond his hatred for his distant father and alcoholic mother. Of course Doty then turns out to be an incredibly distant writer and a longtime drug addict starting at age 15, but he never seems to navel-gaze enough to see that he's just like his parents or to learn anything about himself. Or if he has he doesn't write it here. This firebird has no real power and is a total dud.
Mark Doty doesn't know how to write or tell a story. This account of his younger years is told in distorted prose that gives glimpses of his half-memories and states as fact things from his childhood are impossible for him to have recalled in such detail. You keep waiting for something to happen, but nothing really does--it's filled with the mundane fictionalized with creative writing. It has a few glimpses of what he claims are his longings for other men, yet there is no culmination and just when he gets to something significant in his life he choose to skirt the entire story. At some point someone in his house has a gun and points it at another, but it's so confusing due to his poor storytelling and his admitted bad memory that I have no idea what really happened.
It's all like a bad Wikipedia entry, at less than 200 small pages. Speaking of which--if you look at his Wikipedia bio it fails to mention significant things, like his marriage to a woman for like eight years that is only alluded to in a couple book sentences or his constant moves around the country. How in the world did this guy who lived in a different city every year and then left home in Arizona at age 14 for San Francisco (which his stupid parents allowed) end up going to Des Moines for college? Did he ever graduate high school? How was he legally allowed to marry at age 17? These and many other questions go unanswered in this lame book.
He also appears to have no real morality. Oh, he includes a few pious references to his church attendance and begrudging prayer life, but it's never serious and he does state that he's unclear whether he believes (again skirting any true self-exposure). What he defines as a moral issue is supporting grape workers, but he doesn't consider abortion a moral question at all and thinks nothing of his trashy sister getting one.
There's nothing sexual in this book and I have no idea how or when he consummated his gay sexuality or met his adult boyfriend. He doesn't tell. Isn't that what a queer memoir is supposed to do?
Ironically he states that his favorite tabloid book was called That Special Summer, a gay porn novel for which he praises its "prose style." That alone should let you know what his writing standards are.
He says, "A writer I know says 'Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what.'" Then why in the world didn't this guy say anything clearly? Instead we get diversion tactics where he avoids really letting us into his life. The wall is too high up, and this is written decades after he supposedly embraced his homosexuality.
He also says, "To tell a story is to take power over it." Well he then is powerless. There is almost no story here, beyond his hatred for his distant father and alcoholic mother. Of course Doty then turns out to be an incredibly distant writer and a longtime drug addict starting at age 15, but he never seems to navel-gaze enough to see that he's just like his parents or to learn anything about himself. Or if he has he doesn't write it here. This firebird has no real power and is a total dud.
July 18, 2021
This memoir feels like an epic origin myth, of the things that made the poet the person he was as he wrote this. At one point he says, "I lived. I wanted to live, or at least, now, in the reinvention of the past that remembering is, I want to; I don't want to miss my life, I don't want to miss anything." I know that my past is stories that I've told myself over and over. I think the tone of this memoir is almost perfect. It celebrates and amplifies those stories in the poet's life. I always say that I am looking for the book that has the answer, to some undefinable need in my life. I feel like Mark Doty found some of his answers in writing this memoir.
August 18, 2017
"Art had a past, and a future; to dance or paint or write was to enter a tradition, a conversation of human gestures across time. The Masters went before, and pointed toward just how far there was to go. And what you made, for better or worse, might be here tomorrow."
Beautifully written and well described memoir of one of America's great poets and growing up gay in the 60's.
Beautifully written and well described memoir of one of America's great poets and growing up gay in the 60's.
February 18, 2018
The author mostly writes poetry and this autobiography is full of beautiful and unique imagery. I had a hard time getting through the middle of the book where he seems disengaged and cut off, but truthfully it accurately reflects his life at the time. He was attempting to numb himself with drugs. Some spine-tingling scenes.
November 14, 2018
Graceful, erudite, heartbreaking, hopeful. An affirmation of the visceral truths of art.
December 30, 2014
Mark Doty, an American poet (b. 1953), wrote a wonderful coming-of-age memoir called Firebird.
To the outside world, the four members of Doty’s middle-class family could be in a sitcom of the time period: the father is an engineer, the mother looks respectable, the older sister is popular, and the little boy is bespectacled and bookish. But all is not as it seems. Alcohol wreaks its slow destruction on the family.
But most crucial to Doty’s identity is a difference that occurs even before the disintegration does. The little boy, Doty himself, gradually comes to realize he is gay, and there is no place for being gay in the world in which he grows up.
Because this book was written by a poet, the language is rich and evocative. I love the little boy at the heart of the book.
Here is one important thing I learned from reading Firebird:
Doty begins his memoir with a “Prelude” (so termed because of the use of music and art in the book) which is a beautiful essay in its own right and introduces the reader to a way of viewing a memoir. This essay is about a work of art from the 17th century by the Dutch painter Samuel Von Hoogstraten. It’s called Perspective Box with Views of a Dutch Interior.
This perspective box contains the miniature furnishings of a miniature room which are distorted and misshapen; however, when you look through holes designed for viewing, suddenly the room comes into perfect perspective. Interesting way of viewing memoir itself . . . .
The metaphor of the work of art for memoir and the detailed description both serve as an inspiration to write with detailed accuracy and imagination.
To the outside world, the four members of Doty’s middle-class family could be in a sitcom of the time period: the father is an engineer, the mother looks respectable, the older sister is popular, and the little boy is bespectacled and bookish. But all is not as it seems. Alcohol wreaks its slow destruction on the family.
But most crucial to Doty’s identity is a difference that occurs even before the disintegration does. The little boy, Doty himself, gradually comes to realize he is gay, and there is no place for being gay in the world in which he grows up.
Because this book was written by a poet, the language is rich and evocative. I love the little boy at the heart of the book.
Here is one important thing I learned from reading Firebird:
Doty begins his memoir with a “Prelude” (so termed because of the use of music and art in the book) which is a beautiful essay in its own right and introduces the reader to a way of viewing a memoir. This essay is about a work of art from the 17th century by the Dutch painter Samuel Von Hoogstraten. It’s called Perspective Box with Views of a Dutch Interior.
This perspective box contains the miniature furnishings of a miniature room which are distorted and misshapen; however, when you look through holes designed for viewing, suddenly the room comes into perfect perspective. Interesting way of viewing memoir itself . . . .
The metaphor of the work of art for memoir and the detailed description both serve as an inspiration to write with detailed accuracy and imagination.
September 29, 2008
reading this, gregory orr's book, The Blessing and mary karr's Liar's Club in quick succession is a pretty interesting endeavor. these authors all struggled through painful childhoods to achieve their poetic voices. doty's experience growing up gay in the 1960 seems to be his vehicle toward expression. the isolation and interiority he felt in school, at home, as a runaway, in his ballroom dance class, determined his position as outsider. as outsider, he becomes observer. the way he tells the stories of his parents, his sister, the incredibly communicative details he gives to the few friends he discusses at any length, all demonstrate his incredibly nuanced yet panoramic scope of attention.
doty, karr, and orr each tells his or her own story with the kind of authority that comes from being an expert in a very narrow field and also from an understanding that one's own struggle might have been easier had there been a story like this to comfort and reassure the painfully-becoming artist. also, these stories all end happily, more happily than the books do, perhaps: with book deals and texts that are used in graduate level courses and book clubs. i am sure that their younger selves would have taken some solace from knowing it may not end happily ever after, but at least there was another perspective coming and all those everyday tragedies (and the big, special tragedies) would help refine the artist. these books, now, are available to those suffering through similar youths or evolutions. it is a fascinating cycle.
doty, karr, and orr each tells his or her own story with the kind of authority that comes from being an expert in a very narrow field and also from an understanding that one's own struggle might have been easier had there been a story like this to comfort and reassure the painfully-becoming artist. also, these stories all end happily, more happily than the books do, perhaps: with book deals and texts that are used in graduate level courses and book clubs. i am sure that their younger selves would have taken some solace from knowing it may not end happily ever after, but at least there was another perspective coming and all those everyday tragedies (and the big, special tragedies) would help refine the artist. these books, now, are available to those suffering through similar youths or evolutions. it is a fascinating cycle.
August 17, 2008
When I read Mark Doty’s prose, I feel like I’m reading poetry. It’s not just his beautiful use of language, the lyrical rhythm of his sentences, or the acuity of his insights. Those are important, too. But what makes me give myself over to his prose in a way that I associate more with poetry is his rich sentient sensibility, the way his thoughts and preoccupations seem to emanate from and inhabit the world around him. Doty’s deftly vivid descriptions of the expansive coastal landscape of Provincetown in his first memoir, Heaven’s Coast, render invigorating representations of his immense love for his partner Wally and the boundless grief he experiences when Wally succumbs to AIDS. As readers, we experience some of the dislocation of grief, the swell and drop of grieving, as Doty leads us from the roiling open sea of new loss to the more gently lapping waves on shore by the book’s end. In Firebird, he’s done it again, animating his account of barely surviving coming-of-age gay in 1960s America through the myth of the phoenix. It’s the perfect metaphor to wrap around and intertwine with the story of a sensitive little boy drawn to objects that blaze with beauty who is made to burn with shame for his differences until he is born again through the very aesthetic society tells him is dead wrong for a boy. Like the tear of the phoenix, Doty’s tale of survival is salve for any spirit threatened by the flames of censure.
August 11, 2012
I guess I had expected this memoir to be a different kind of memoir--narrative driven, maybe, like other ones I'd read. But Mark Doty is a poet (a fact I barely knew, I barely knew anything about him except that his name looked familiar, from some essay I read in a class once). And for poetry Firebird is all of that: the prose enchanted, the lines lyrical, every scene captured with a sense of breathlessness. It is a memoir about being gay, about being an outsider, about the dysfunctional (of course) family, and about writing itself. And yet: though each segment is wonderful, the book as a whole felt more disjointed. These unconnected scenes, so vibrantly captured, don't seem to unravel a collective history. The metaphors, though at times startlingly original and wonderful, sometimes felt forced. I appreciate this book for the beauty of language, but the story it tells seemed like it could have been more powerfully sketched.
March 8, 2014
Not only a book on not fitting in because author Mary Doty realizes he is gay, but a book on not fitting in just because . . . . This books explores loving family connections and how they are sometimes destroyed by alcohol, sorrow , apathy and neglect. This book is a gem because Doty is such a contemplative soul. Finished it last night , wait, early this morning, about 1:30 am. It was worth staying up to read.
April 17, 2023
So beautiful! I love this book of poetry. The title image "Firebird" comes from a description of Doty doing improvisational dance to Stravinsky's Suite of a Firebird at his grade school. His memoir is filled with the lyric translation of art into the body. "Who is this boy who pirouettes in his Husky Boy jeans as if he hadn't a shred of shame?" - p. 80 May we all be that boy!
August 10, 2011
Mark Doty is an amazing writer. In this memoir, he writes about growing up gay in Arizona in the '60's. It's an introspective look at himself as a boy - to - young man; at his familial relationships; as well as his relationship to the world at large -- including his relationship with himself.
His story is full of rich imagery and honesty, and as always, Doty's prose is perfection.
His story is full of rich imagery and honesty, and as always, Doty's prose is perfection.
April 30, 2013
A longtime fan of Doty's memoirs and poetry, I was perplexed by this memoir. While it gives the reader great insight into the childhood of a man in constant struggle to claim his identity, the style is out of character. Not till half way through the book does the language seem authentic to Mark Doty, a very fine poet.
November 9, 2013
Mark Doty takes his memoir and shapes it into a painting brushing multiple colors and flourishes throughout his life while using many brushes. His memoir is packed with embellishments and edgy situations that occur as he s discovering his homosexuality. Provocative. Fast moving. Never dull. Doty offers new version of writing a memoir.
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June 16, 2007
Mark Doty writes memoirs like it is his job. Still Life with Oysters and Lemons is one of my all time favorite books but Firebird, at the time I read it fell short. It is more memoir that "Still Life" with far fewer connective musings. It felt less personally connective and more self indulgent.
December 29, 2008
After hearing Mark read his poetry and speak at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, I wanted to read this memoir about his early life. It was extremely well written and an amazing story of survival despite severe family issues and a lonely nomadic life.
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