A poet who won the National Book Critic's Circle Award shares the story of his relationship with lover Wally Roberts, who died of AIDS in 1993, recounting the effect the disease had on their lives and the aftermath of Wally's death. National ad/promo. Tour.

Heaven's Coast: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

DOTY, Mark.

Arts & Literature

Harpercollins

Though five volumes of poetry and his award-winning memoir, Heaven's Coast, Mark Doty has produced one of the most important bodies of work in contemporary literature. In his powerful new autobiography, Firebird, Doty tells the story of a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's "Get Happy" by his alarmed mother at the bedroom door, exclaiming, "Son, you're a boy!" 
 A self-confessed "chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent," Mark Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America--from Memphis to Tucson, Florida to California. With Doty's rebellious sister already heading down a road that will bring her more than the usual share of teenage troubles, and his parents bedazzled by their own isolate disappointments, Firebird presents us with a heroic little boy who has quite enough worries without discovering that his dawning sexuality is The Wrong One. Attracted not to baseball gloves or space travel but to textiles and opera, horror movies and free-form dance, he finds that his confusion and fear are shared by those around him as he tries to make his way into the world to the sound of Petula Clark singing "Downtown."
 A heartbreaking comedy of one family's dissolution through the corrosive powers of alcohol, sorrow, and thwarted desire, Firebird is also a wry evocation of childhood's pleasures and terrors, and a comic tour of suburban American life in the fifties and sixties. Lyrical and shattering at once, alive with vivid characters and a beauty of language and detail that are the hallmarks of Doty's miraculous prose, Firebird is unsparingly truthful and compassionate, a testament to how it is possible to save oneself through the transformative power of art.

Firebird: A Memoir

Harper

Atlantis: Poems

The poignant, accomplished new collection of poetry from the author of My Alexandria--1993 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Times Book Award, 1993 National Book Award Finalist.

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Sweet Machine: Poems

A collection of lyrical and joyful poems explores the "sweet machine" of the body as a vibrant, sensual, living thing

The darkly graceful poems in Mark Doty's seventh collection explore the ways in which we are educated by the implacable powers of time and desire. The world constantly renews itself, and the new brings both possibility and erasure. Given the limits of our own bodies, how are we to live within the inevitability of despair?
This is the plainest of Doty's books, its language stripped and humbled. But whatever depths are sounded in these poems, their humane and open music sustains. Art itself instructs us. Lucian Freud's startling renditions of human skin, Virginia Woolf's ecstatic depiction of consciousness, Caravaggio's only-too-real people elevated to difficult glory -- all turn the light of human intelligence upon "the night of time."
Formally inventive, warm, at once witty and disconsolate, School of the Arts represents a poet reinventing his own voice at midlife, finding a way through a troubled passage. Acutely attentive, insistently alive, this is a book of "fierce vulnerability."

School of the Arts: Poems

United States

With School of the Arts, Mark Doty's darkly graceful seventh collection, the poet reinvents his own voice at midlife, finding his way through a troubled passage. At once witty and disconsolate - formally inventive, acutely attentive, insistently alive - this is a book of fierce vulnerability that explores the ways in which we are educated by the implacable powers of time and desire in a world that constantly renews itself.

Harper-perennial

Mark Doty's Fire to Fire collects the best of Mark Doty's seven books of poetry, along with a generous selection of new work. Doty's subjects—our mortal situation, the evanescent beauty of the world, desire's transformative power, and art's ability to give shape to human lives—echo and develop across twenty years of poems. His signature style encompasses both the plainspoken and the artfully wrought; here one of contemporary American poetry's most lauded, recognizable voices speaks to the crises and possibilities of our times.

Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems: A National Book Award Winner

Genre Fiction

Mark Doty's Fire to Fire collects the best of his seven books of poetry, along with a generous selection of new work. His signature style encompasses both the plainspoken and the artfully wrought, as one of contemporary American poetry's most lauded, recognizable voices speaks to the crises and possibilities of our time.

Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems

The year is 1989 and Mark Doty's life has reached a state of enviable equilibrium. His reputation as a poet of formidable talent is growing, he enjoys his work as a college professor and, perhaps most importantly, he is deeply in love with his partner of many years, Wally Roberts. The harmonious existence these two men share is shattered, however, when they learn that Wally has tested positive for the HIV virus.
 From diagnosis to the initial signs of deterioration to the heartbreaking hour when Wally is released from his body's ruined vessel, Heaven's Coastis an intimate chronicle of love, its hardships, and its innumerable gifts. We witness Doty's passage through the deepest phase of grief -- letting his lover go while keeping him firmly alive in memory and heart -- and, eventually beyond, to the slow reawakening of the possibilities of pleasure. Part memoir, part journal, part elegy for a life of rare communication and beauty, Heaven's Coast evinces the same stunning honesty, resplendent descriptive power and rapt attention to the physical landscape that has won Doty's poetry such attention and acclaim.

In Firebird, Mark Doty tells the story of a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's "Get Happy" by his alarmed mother at the bedroom door, exclaiming, "Son, you're a boy!"
Firebird presents us with a heroic little boy who has quite enough worries without discovering that his dawning sexuality is the Wrong One. A self-confessed "chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent," Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America-from Tennessee to Arizona, Florida to California. A lyrical, heartbreaking comedy of one family's dissolution through the corrosive powers of alcohol, sorrow, and thwarted desire, Firebird is also a wry evocation of childhood's pleasures and terrors, a comic tour of American suburban life, and a testament to the transformative power of art.

Dramas & Plays

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DOTY, Mark.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by DOTY, Mark.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DOTY, Mark.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Heaven's Coast: A Memoir

Firebird: A Memoir

Atlantis: Poems

Sweet Machine: Poems

School of the Arts: Poems

School of the Arts: Poems

Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems: A National Book Award Winner

Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems

Heaven's Coast: A Memoir

Firebird: A Memoir