Sweet Machine

"Mark Doty says, 'What I love about language/is what I love about fog: /what comes between us and things/grants them shine.' What comes between Mark Doty and the things in "Sweet Machine" is the sheerest translucent membrane of regard, the astonishing gloss of his eye's sweep and pinpoint--his luminous language. Nothing escapes his gaze and nothing--death, devastation, the ghost of a gesture--escapes its sheer insistence on beauty, the world 'lustered by the veil.' Mark Doty is a master, re-painting our sad daily canvas, heightening the gold light, the diffusion, the shocked shattered glass and the artificial bath of attitude, letting us see it all arrayed, as he says, under the 'uncompromising vault of heaven.'" -- Carol Muske"Having published the first poem and the last, I thought--having read the old poems too--I had known what to expect, but the senses are always new, and Doty's loyalty to them, and to the sense they make, continues to astonish, to enlighten, to console." -- Richard Howard"Strange paradise, complete with worms', Mark Doty begins a poem. In four collections of poetry, this masterful poet writes elegies so full of life we find our hope restored. Moving, splendidly observant and unflinching, Mark Doty's poems extend the range of the American lyric poem."-- Citation for the Writer Bynner Prize for Poetry awared by the American Academy of Arts and Letters