School of the Arts: Poems

by Mark Doty

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060752467
• ISBN13: 9780060752460
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Lyrical Master's Best Work Yet

Wow! I really can't understand why Mark Doty's most recent poetry collection hasn't been reviewed here yet, in light of its considerable popularity among the critics. Everyone seems to be hailing this book as a seminal author-finally-finding-his-own-unique-voice sort of work, a more precise definition of Doty's stylistic approach, but it seems to me to be fairly in line with the rest of his output. Still, it never feels tired or stale in the least, and several individual numbers stand out as some of the author's best to date. School of the Arts begins and ends with two poems titled "Heaven for Helen" and "Heaven for Arden", and these help to form a thematic arc for the book as a whole, together with a few more "Heaven for..." titles interspersed throughout the middle. All of those are highlights, as well as Ultrasound, Flit, In the Same Space, Now You're An Animal, and The Pink Poppy, which may be Doty's finest meditation on beauty yet. Cozy up with this book sometime when you're feeling pleasantly contemplative, and you will find that, as always, Doty's verse causes everything around you to take on a light of indescribable beauty, singularity, and truth. Highly recommended.