We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear. Mark Doty More Quotes by Mark Doty More Quotes From Mark Doty I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ...and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I've been holding myself...Mostly I've been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it's coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely...It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there's a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon. Mark Doty morningmemoriesmoving It's freeing, to think that there's always an aspect of us outside the grasp of speech, the common stuff of language. Mark Doty speechstuffthinking What is healing, but a shift in perspectives? Mark Doty perspectivehealing 'Everything beautiful occurs when the body / is suspended,' Helena Mesa quotes a performance artist who hangs his own pierced body in the air. Mesa's poems are artfully suspended between lyric and narrative, between humans and animals, between Latin America and the U.S., between desire and the difficulty of its fulfillment. Horse Dance Underwater is an inventive, musical, and powerful debut. Mark Doty horsepowerfulbeautiful In Judith Barrington's striking collection, Horses and the Human Soul, human emotions come ushered and accompanied by animal companions, especially the horses this speaker loves. Here they are witnesses, companions to the spirit, and as vulnerably mortal as human beings. Socially and politically alert, lamenting and celebrating, Barrington's passionate poems inscribe the broad range of her affections. Mark Doty horsesoulanimal ...in the face of all dangers, in what may seem a godless region, we move forward through the agencies of love and art. Mark Doty agencyartmoving Sentimental assertions are always a form of detachment; they confront the acute, terrible awareness of individual pain, the sharp particularity of loss or the fierce individuality of passion with the dulling universal certainty of platitude. Mark Doty passionpaininspirational We learn to treasure words that people call us; Mark Doty tosshurtpeople Poetry is ... the physical enactment of a process Mark Doty languageknowingmean Desire can make anything into a god. Mark Doty desire ... the attempt to render visual intricacy makes words feel unwieldy, like sacks of meaning that must be lugged into place, dragged here and there, then still don't fell accurate. Mark Doty intricacyhere-and-therefeels Questions, inside the larger mystery of sorrow, which contains us and our daily transit, and is large enough indeed to contain the whole shifting tidal theater where I make small constructions, my metaphors, my defenses. Against which I play out theories, doubts, certainties bright as high tide in sunlight, which shift just as that brightness does, in fog or rain. Mark Doty fogplayrain No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins. Mark Doty sequinsqueenssaid I want what everybody wants, that's how I know I'm still breathing. Mark Doty breathingstillswant
