Mark Doty

Mark Doty was born in Maryville, Tennessee,{{cite news|last1=Mansfield|first1=Susan|title=StAnza festival: Mark Doty talks Walt Whitman|url=https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/stanza-festival-mark-doty-talks-walt-whitman-1-2818025|access-date=April 9, 2018|work=The Scotsman|date=March 2, 2013}} to Lawrence and Ruth Doty, with an older sister, Sarah Alice Doty. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.{{Cite web |url=http://www.goddard.edu/event/mark-doty-poetry-reading/ |title=Biography on Goddard College webpage |access-date=2016-02-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180729230545/https://www.goddard.edu/event/mark-doty-poetry-reading/ |archive-date=July 29, 2018 |url-status=dead }}

Doty's first collection of poems, Turtle, Swan, was published by David R. Godine in 1987; a second collection, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight, appeared from the same publisher in 1991. Booklist described his verse as "quiet, intimate" and praised its original style in turning powerful young urban experience into "an example of how we live, how we suffer and transcend suffering".{{Cite web |url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mark-doty |title=Biography|access-date=2016-02-26 |work=Poetry Foundation }}

Doty's "Tiara" was printed in 1990 in an anthology called Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS. This poem critiques the way society perceived and treated homosexual AIDS sufferers. The 1980s marked the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. The Reagan administration's delayed action to fight AIDS resulted in thousands of deaths, especially among young gay men.Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: St. Martin's, 1987. Some believe the initial reluctance to mobilize was due to homophobia—society was, at the time, uncomfortable with gay sexuality. This poem criticizes the idea that gay men "invite[d] their own oppression as a consequence of pleasure."Landau, Deborah. "How to Live. What to Do: The Poetics and Politics of AIDS." American Literature 68.1 (1996): 193-225. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. The poem's phrase "he asked for it" represents this common, unsympathetic opinion about gay men with AIDS. Imagery like "perfect stasis" and "body's paradise" is used by Doty to paint a future beyond brutality and discrimination for AIDS sufferers. According to Landau, Doty's poems were "humane and comforting narratives" that offered hope to people living with HIV and stood in contrast to the hostile climate of the United States.

His third book of poetry, My Alexandria (University of Illinois Press, 1993), reflects the grief, perceptions and new awareness gained in the face of great and painful loss. In 1989, Doty's partner Wally Roberts tested positive for HIV.{{citation |title=Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature |first=Colm |last=Toibin |author-link=Colm Toibin |year=2002 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=0-7432-4467-2 |page=241}} The collection, written while Roberts had not yet become ill, contemplates the prospect of mortality, desperately attempting to find some way of making the prospect of loss even momentarily bearable. My Alexandria was chosen for the National Poetry Series by Philip Levine, and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. When the book was published in the U.K. by Jonathan Cape, Doty became the first American poet to win the T. S. Eliot Prize, Britain's most significant annual award for poetry.{{cite news |last=Sutherland |first= Amy |date=2013-01-06 |title=Mark Doty: Poet and biography buff

|url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/01/06/mark-doty-poet-and-biography-buff/SrjjZxWSrXH9RlZoksqGmM/story.html|newspaper=Boston Globe |location=Boston|access-date=2016-02-26}}

Doty had begun the poems collected in Atlantis (HarperCollins, 1995) when Roberts died in 1994. The book won the Bingham Poetry Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. Heaven's Coast: A Memoir (HarperCollins, 1996), is a meditative account of losing a loved one, and a study in grief. The book received the PEN Martha Albrand Award First Nonfiction.h//www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/896

Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Deep Lane (W.W. Norton, 2015), a book of descents: into the earth beneath the garden, into the dark substrata of a life.{{Cite web |url=http://www.goddard.edu/event/mark-doty-poetry-reading/ |title=Mark Doty Poetry Reading |access-date=2016-02-26 |work=Notes on Goddard College Lecture series 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180729230545/https://www.goddard.edu/event/mark-doty-poetry-reading/ |archive-date=July 29, 2018 |url-status=dead }} He has also written essays on still life painting, objects and intimacy, and a handbook for writers. His volumes of poetry include Sweet Machine (HarperCollins, 1998), Source, (HarperCollins, 2002), School of the Arts (HarperCollins, 2005) and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 2008), which received the National Book Award.{{Cite web |url=http://www.nationalbook.org/nbawinners_category.html#.VtIAOsdzTv0 |title=National Book Award Winners: 1950 – 2014 (Alpha By Category) |access-date=2016-02-26 |work=National Book Foundation }}

Doty's three memoirs include Heaven's Coast, described as "searing" by The New York Times, is the excruciating journaling of his thoughts subsequent to hearing his lover's diagnosis with AIDS, a work "layered" with awarenesses like Dante's trip through hell{{cite news |last=Kirby |first= David |date=1996-03-10 |title=The Survivor (review of Heaven's Coast A Memoir)

|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/10/books/the-survivor.html|newspaper=New York Times Book Review |location=NYC|access-date=2016-02-26}} (HarperCollins, 1996), and Firebird: A Memoir, an autobiography from six to sixteen, which tells the story of his childhood in the American South and in Arizona (HarperCollins, 1999).{{cite web|last1=Wiegand|first1=David|title=Looking Back at a Hell of a Childhood|url=http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Looking-Back-at-a-Hell-of-a-Childhood-Poet-Mark-2898553.php|website=SFGate|date=October 31, 1999|access-date=1 March 2016}} These first two

memoirs received the American Library Associations Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award. His most recent memoir, Dog Years (HarperCollins, 2005), was a New York Times Bestseller and received the Barbara Gittings Literature Award from the American Library Association in 2008.{{Cite web|url=http://www.ala.org/glbtrt/award/honored#2005 |title=Stonewall Award List |access-date=2016-02-26 |work=American Library Association |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160905113937/http://www.ala.org/glbtrt/award/honored |archive-date=September 5, 2016 }}

Doty's essays include Still Life with Oysters and Lemon (Beacon Press, 2001), a book-length essay about 17th-century Dutch painting and our relationships to objects, and The Art of Description (Graywolf Books, 2010), a collection of four essays in which "Doty considers the task of saying what you see, and the challenges of rendering experience through language."{{Cite book |url=http://www.pw.org/content/the_art_of_description_world_into_word |title=Book description by Poets and Writer's Magazine |access-date=2016-02-26 |work=The Art of Description: World Into Word by Mark Doty|isbn=9781555975630 |last1=Doty |first1=Mark |date=July 20, 2010 |publisher=Graywolf Press }}

He served as guest editor for The Best American Poetry 2012 (Scribners, 2012).{{Cite web |url=http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/archive/ |title=Best American Poetry Archive |access-date=2016-02-26 |work=The Best American Poetry 2012}}

Doty has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, Cornell and NYU. He was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program for ten years, and is {{as of|2013|July|alt=currently}} Distinguished Professor and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he directs Writers House. He has also participated in The Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers, and was on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in August 2006. He is the inaugural judge of the White Crane/James White Poetry Prize for Excellence in Gay Men's Poetry.{{Cite web |url=http://www.gaywisdom.org/projects/jwpp_judge.html |title=James White Poetry Prize |access-date=2016-02-26 |work=White Crane Institute |archive-date=October 3, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111003004352/http://www.gaywisdom.org/projects/jwpp_judge.html |url-status=dead }}

Doty was a judge for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize.[http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/judges/2013-judges/ Griffin Poetry Prize 2013 Judges] In 2014, he was welcomed as a trustee of the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry.{{Cite web |url=http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/judges-for-the-2015-griffin-poetry-prize-announced-and-new-trustee-welcomed/ |title=Judges for the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize Announced and New Trustee Welcomed (September 17, 2014) |access-date=September 22, 2014 |archive-date=March 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304050813/http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/judges-for-the-2015-griffin-poetry-prize-announced-and-new-trustee-welcomed/ |url-status=dead }}

In 2011, Doty was elected a Chancellor of the [http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/mark-doty Academy of American Poets].{{Cite web|url=http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/mark-doty|title = About Mark Doty | Academy of American Poets}}

From 1995 until 2010, his partner was the writer Paul Lisicky. They were married in 2008 and divorced in 2013. Doty currently lives with his husband Alexander Hadel in New York City and in the hamlet of The Springs in East Hampton, New York. The couple married in October 2015 in Muir Woods National Monument.https://www.facebook.com/mark.doty.940/about?section=relationship {{User-generated source|certain=yes|date=March 2022}}

{{Incomplete list|date=February 2016}}

• 1992: National Poetry Series Winner{{cite web |url=http://www.nationalpoetryseries.org/ |title=Previous Winning Publications |author= |website=The National Poetry Series |access-date=July 18, 2016}} for My Alexandria
• 1993: National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for My Alexandria{{cite web |url=http://bookcritics.org/awards/past_awards |title=All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists |author= |website=National Book Critics Circle |access-date=July 17, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018063346/http://bookcritics.org/awards/past_awards/ |archive-date=October 18, 2015 |url-status=dead }}
• 1993: Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry for My Alexandria{{cite web |url=http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/book-prizes-winners-by-award/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160116081025/http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/book-prizes-winners-by-award/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 16, 2016 |title=Winners by Award |author= |website=Los Angeles Times, Festival of Books |access-date=July 18, 2016}}
• 1994: Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities{{cite web |url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/#gf-search-submit-btn |title=Fellows |author= |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |access-date=July 18, 2016 |archive-date=July 7, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170707071610/http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/#gf-search-submit-btn |url-status=dead }}
• 1994: Whiting Award
• 1995: T. S. Eliot Prize for My Alexandria
• 1995,{{cite web |url= http://www.lambdaliterary.org/sandbox/winners-finalists/07/14/lambda-literary-awards-1995/

|title=8th Annual Lambda Literary Awards |first=Antonio Gonzalez |last=Cerna |date=July 14, 1996 |website=Lambda Literary |access-date=July 17, 2016}} 2001,{{cite web |url=http://www.lambdaliterary.org/winners-finalists/07/09/lambda-literary-awards-2001/ |title=14th Annual Lambda Literary Awards |author=Antonio Gonzalez Cerna |date=July 9, 2002 |website=Lambda Literary |access-date=July 17, 2016}} 2008:{{cite web |url=http://www.lambdaliterary.org/winners-finalists/02/18/lambda-literary-awards-2008-2/ |title=21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards |first=Antonio Gonzalez |last=Cerna |date=February 18, 2010 |website=Lambda Literary |access-date=July 17, 2016}} Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Poetry for Atlantis, Source, Fire to Fire

• 1997: Pen/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction for Heaven's Coast{{cite web |url=https://pen.org/penmartha-albrand-award-first-nonfiction-winners |title=Pen/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction Winners |author= |website=Pen America |date=May 5, 2016 |access-date=July 18, 2016}}
• 1999: Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award{{cite web |url=http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Documents/Lila-Wallace-Readers-Digest-Writers-Award.pdf |title=Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Awards: the art of the possible |author= |date=August 2000 |website=Wallace Foundation |access-date=July 18, 2016}}
• 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography for Dog Years{{cite web |url=http://www.lambdaliterary.org/winners-finalists/04/30/lambda-literary-awards-2007-2/ |title=20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards |first=Antonio Gonzalez |last=Cerna |date=April 30, 2007 |website=Lambda Literary |access-date=July 17, 2016}}
• 2008: Stonewall Book Award for Dog Years{{cite web |url=http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=archive&template=/contentmanagement/contentdisplay.cfm&ContentID=171128 |title=Avery, Doty win 2008 Stonewall Book awards |author= |date=January 14, 2008 |website=American Library Association |access-date=July 18, 2016}}
• 2008: National Book Award for Poetry{{Cite web|url=http://nationalbook.org/enews_2008_12.html#.VtIpksdzTv0|title=NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS WEEK 2008|access-date=2016-02-26|work=National Book Foundation newsletter, December 2008|archive-date=March 7, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160307123617/http://nationalbook.org/enews_2008_12.html#.VtIpksdzTv0|url-status=dead}}
• 2018: Robert Creeley Award{{Cite web|url=http://robertcreeleyfoundation.org/robert-creeley-award/|title=Robert Creeley Foundation » Award – Robert Creeley Award|website=robertcreeleyfoundation.org|language=en-US|access-date=2018-03-22|archive-date=August 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170803081357/http://robertcreeleyfoundation.org/robert-creeley-award/|url-status=dead}}

{{Incomplete list|date=April 2020}}

;Collections

• {{cite book |title=Turtle, swan |publisher=David R. Godine |year=1987}}
• {{cite book |title=Bethlehem in Broad Daylight|year=1991|publisher=David R. Godine}}. Reprinted with Turtle, Swan by University of Illinois Press, 2000.
• {{cite book |title=My Alexandria: Poems|date=1993|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-06317-6|url=https://archive.org/details/myalexandriapoem00doty}}
• {{cite book |title=Atlantis|date=1995|publisher=HarperCollins}}
• {{cite book |title=Sweet Machine|publisher=Harper Flamingo|year=1998}}
• {{cite book |title=Murano: Poem|year=2000|publisher=Getty Publications|isbn=978-0-89236-598-2|url=https://archive.org/details/muranopoem00doty}}. Reprinted from Sweet Machine.
• {{cite book |title=Source|url=https://archive.org/details/sourcepoems00doty_0|url-access=registration|publisher=HarperCollins|year=2001|isbn=9780060935405}}
• {{cite book |title=School of the Arts|url=https://archive.org/details/schoolofartspoem0000doty|url-access=registration|publisher=HarperCollins|year=2005}}
• {{cite book |title=Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems|publisher=HarperCollins|year=2008|isbn=9780060752477}}
• {{cite book |title=Theories and Apparitions|publisher=Jonathan Cape|year= 2008}}
• {{cite book |title=Paragon Park|year=2012|publisher=David R. Godine|isbn=978-1-56792-442-8}}. Reprint of Turtle, Swan, and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight, with a selection of early poems.
• {{cite book |title=A Swarm, A Flock, A Host|publisher=Prestel|year= 2013}}. With Darren Waterston.
• {{cite book |title=Deep Lane: Poems|year=2015|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-393-07023-1}}

;List of poems

• {{cite book |title=Heaven's Coast|url=https://archive.org/details/heavenscoastmemo00doty_0|url-access=registration|publisher=HarperCollins|year= 1996|isbn=9780060172107}}
• {{cite book |title=Firebird: A Memoir|url=https://archive.org/details/firebirdmemoir00doty|url-access=registration|publisher=HarperCollins|year= 1999|isbn=9780060193744}}
• {{cite book |title=Dog Years|url=https://archive.org/details/dogyearsmemoir00doty|url-access=registration|publisher=HarperCollins|year= 2007|isbn=9780061171000}}
• {{cite book |title=What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life|url=https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393070224|url-access=registration|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|year= 2020}}

• 2003: Open House: Writers Redefine Home, St. Paul: Graywolf BooksWeb page titled [http://www.markdoty.org/id1.html "Mark Doty Books"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080517154132/http://www.markdoty.org/id1.html |date=May 17, 2008 }} at Mark Doty website. Retrieved May 5, 2008.

• {{cite book |title=Still Life with Oysters and Lemon|url=https://archive.org/details/stilllifewithoys00doty|url-access=registration|year=2001|publisher=Beacon Press|isbn=978-0-8070-6609-6}}
• {{cite book |title=The Art of Description|year=2010|publisher=Graywolf Books}}
• {{cite journal |date=Spring 2010 |title=The Unwriteable |url=https://granta.com/the-unwriteable/ |journal=Granta |issue=110: Sex }} (Subscription Required)
• {{cite journal |date=Autumn 2011 |title=Insatiable |url=https://granta.com/insatiable/ |journal=Granta |issue=117: Horror }} (Subscription Required)

• 2014: The Poetry Brothel, November 10, 2014.{{cite news |url=http://lisamariebasile.tumblr.com/readings |title=Lisa Marie Basile's Archive of Readings |newspaper=Tumblr |access-date=March 15, 2017}}

• 1996: My Alexandria, University of Illinois Press

• 1998: Poetry Heaven, a three-part video series, The Dodge Foundation, New Jersey
• 1999: Mark Doty: Readings & Conversations, Lannan Literary Videos, Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles
• 1999: "Fooling with Words", Bill Moyers PBS special, September

• LGBT culture in New York City
• List of LGBT people from New York City
• NYC Pride March
• Poetry analysis

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.kwls.org/podcasts/mark_doty_2008/ Audio: Mark Doty at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008: A Reading]
• [http://www.kwls.org/podcasts/mark_doty_2008-2/ Audio: Mark Doty at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008: Keynote Address]
• [http://www.indiefeedpp.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=232322 Mark Doty performing "Pipistrelle" on the Indiefeed Performance Poetry Podcast]
• [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/91 Mark Doty's Poets.org bio]
• [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/doty/doty.htm Mark Doty's University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign bio] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060219152524/http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/doty/doty.htm |date=February 19, 2006 }}
• [http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/mark-doty#/ Profile at The Whiting Foundation]
• [http://www.whiting.org/awards/keynotes/mark-doty 2011 Whiting Writers' Award Keynote Speech] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923183927/http://www.whiting.org/awards/keynotes/mark-doty |date=September 23, 2015 }}
• [http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/poets/a_f/doty/doty.htm Modern American Poetry] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100718204041/http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/poets/a_f/doty/doty.htm |date=July 18, 2010 }}
• [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/91 Academy of American Poets]
• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20120830105018/http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/something-understood/ 'Something Understood']}}, review of The Art of Description in The Oxonian Review

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Doty, Mark}}

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