Mark Doty, School of the Arts

School of the Arts is the first work by Mark Doty that I've read, though not the first I've picked up. He is one of those contemporary poets who is lurking around my scanty awareness of American poetry as someone to be read and yet... Until now, hadn't been.

Not sure exactly why I picked up this volume, at this time. In Borders. Had a coupon to burn. Thought I wanted to treat myself to a poetry collection. And I found myself home with School of the Arts.

I've never really known how to write -- especially in brief -- about poetry. A tricky business considering the field I've chosen and where so much of my energy goes (when it goes). But to speak in generalities about such compressed language?

Let's not.

One of the striking things about this collection, or rather about my reading of this collection, was how in the process of reading I felt the urge to write. Not write in the moment, but to remember a scene, a setting, a feeling that Doty evoked and revisit it myself. In a line or stanza or, god forbid, an entire verse.

It reminded me of all that was before me and the poetic possibilities of... well, everything. Seen, broken off, reworked, re-created -- and renewed.

It was abundantly clear, as well, that Doty was working on this volume at the same time that he must have been working on (or at least preparing the way for) his most recent memoir, Dog Years.

The lines that jumped out at me?

"what's less graceful / than transport?"
From "The Vault - 4. Hood"

Seems to be sort of loading the dice -- wonderfully so, when you think about it: "transport" really is such a leaden term. Clever, clever. And very much the art of poetry.

Although I might take issue with the assertion itself.