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Overview
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.
Winner of the 2008 National Book Award for Poetry
Synopsis
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.
Washington Post Book World
“...showcases Doty’s abiding fondness for examining the human condition”
Editorials
Washington Post Book World
"...showcases Doty’s abiding fondness for examining the human condition"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"If words this moving do not constitute great poetry, I’d like to know what does."Booklist
"Doty’s facility with his chosen form...is so natural that the craft in his work is all but invisible; he makes the damnably difficult look deceptively simple."Slate
"Doty displays a gift for interweaving arresting image with tender narrative."Christian Science Monitor
"[Doty] uses language as a way to highlight a moment, elevate it, and unearth hidden depth and meaning...Striking imagery and a powerful imagination are two of his best tools..."Newsday
"Doty is always searching for beauty in a world that can be tragic or simply mundane."Time Out New York
"Mark Doty still finds wonder in a world of confusion and hardships...a much-needed book of new and selected older poems by Doty."Dallas Morning News
"Doty is terrifically precise as he inspects time’s wreckage…The rhythm of his lines, its syntactical genius, propels us down the page, stopping time when necessary, making the familiar…exotic."Newsday
“Doty is always searching for beauty in a world that can be tragic or simply mundane.”Dallas Morning News
“Doty is terrifically precise as he inspects time’s wreckage…The rhythm of his lines, its syntactical genius, propels us down the page, stopping time when necessary, making the familiar…exotic.”Booklist
“Doty’s facility with his chosen form...is so natural that the craft in his work is all but invisible; he makes the damnably difficult look deceptively simple.”Time Out New York
“Mark Doty still finds wonder in a world of confusion and hardships...a much-needed book of new and selected older poems by Doty.”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“If words this moving do not constitute great poetry, I’d like to know what does.”Washington Post Book World
“...showcases Doty’s abiding fondness for examining the human condition”Christian Science Monitor
“[Doty] uses language as a way to highlight a moment, elevate it, and unearth hidden depth and meaning...Striking imagery and a powerful imagination are two of his best tools...”Slate
“Doty displays a gift for interweaving arresting image with tender narrative.”Library Journal
"Pages falling into sleep and dust,/ dust and sleep, burning so slowly/ you wouldn't even know there was a fire." Yet every one of the poems here is ablaze, each illuminating its subject and fixing it in our minds before it disappears. This book won the National Book Award for the already trophy-laden Doty. (LJ4/1/08)
—Barbara Hoffert