poetry book club: mark doty’s ‘fire to fire’

by Jessica Fox-Wilson

Whenever I begin reading a large collection, such as Mark Doty’s Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, I have to prepare myself for a more labor-intensive reading process.  The skills that I use when reading single volumes are the same when reading collected works.  Rather than looking for similarities in theme and style in a small grouping of poems, I’m looking for the same connections over a career. But when the career spans seven books and 20-plus years of poems, it is a different type of challenge.  Let’s just say that this is not the type of book I can knock off in a couple of weeks. It’s a book that I had to return to several times over a period of a month and a half.

Despite my stops and starts, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Fire to Fire.  The book begins with his earliest work, and then progresses through selections from each his previous books, beginning with 1987’s Turtle, Swan. The juxtaposition of the newest poems with the oldest poems effectively demonstrated how the scope of Doty’s writing has widened throughout the years. For me, it seemed that his most recent work was also his most complex and ambitious. In the newer poems, he grapples with some of the Big Issues, like Beauty, Existence and the Soul, while his earlier poems feel more intimate and specific.

I think his sense of intimacy is what I admire most about Doty’s work. Doty finds it everywhere, from the temporary intimacy between strangers to the long term intimacy of marriage. Doty extracts the smallest details, the briefest exchanges and uncovers the longing and need beneath.

In “Broadway,” from My Alexandria, he writes of an exchange between four strangers, two of whom are homeless. There is a moment where the narrator touches the homeless woman, and realizes that touching her, ” … was like touching myself // the way your hand feels when you hold it / because you want to feel contained.” In that flash, Doty cuts through the divide between the two people and finds a brief but beautiful bond.

In a later poem, “Paul’s Tattoo,” he watches his partner receive his first tattoo and sees the intention beneath.  Amidst all the trappings of getting a tattoo, he sees the “dear proud flesh / — stingingly warm — a steadier hand has raised into art, or a wound, or both.” The narrator discovers something new and tender in his partner through this experience.

Out of the wealth of material in Fire to Fire, I most appreciated the series of “Theory Of … ” poems in the new section. In these poems, Doty describes larger abstract ideas like multiplicity, beauty and narrative through specific moments. My favorite poem in this series is “Theory of Marriage.” The poem tells of a story in which he and his partner attend a chi gong parlor and receive side-by-side massages. Doty writes: “All too soon it’s over, and the masseuse says, / “Your friend not done, you want do more? / Sure, I say. Feet she says? Almost before I’ve nodded we’re off, / the pushing exploring regions that do not seem to exist until pressed.” As the massage continues, one masseuse finishes before the other, so they alternate in painfully extending the massage, until finally one of them begs for it to stop. The poem presents a humorous and apt theory of marriage as a mutual but not synchronous endurance test.

Unfortunately, a brief review of Fire to Fire cannot do the collection true justice. Throughout the weeks, I’ve enjoyed slowly exploring the different facets of Doty’s writing. I would strongly recommend buying this book and letting it rest on your nightstand for a few months. Take the time to leisurely enjoy Doty’s work, a few poems at a time.

How about you? Did you read Doty’s National Book Award winner? Have you read other Doty books you can recommend?

For those who answered our National Book Award poll with a “What is it?” answer, here’s the scoop, briefly, with none of the intrigue and drama that must have existed as the prize began and changed (one can read between the lines here).

The National Book Foundation started in 1950 as an award to writers from writers.  It went away for a time when publishers began their own thing, and then came back to its own in 1987. The awards are given to American writers, for books published the previous year. The winner gets $10,000 and a bronze sculpture. Finalists get $1,000, a medal and a citation. In 2008 more than 200 publishers submitted 1,258 books for the 2008 National Book Awards; 175 of those were poetry. Robert Haas won in 2007, Nathaniel Mackey in 2006 and W.S. Merwin in 2005. The first poetry prize was made to William Carlos Williams for Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems.