Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight: Two Volumes of Poetry

by Mark Doty

The winner of four major awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize, Mark Doty has established himself as one of the most courageous and eloquent poets of our time. The University of Illinois Press is proud to present this one-volume edition of Doty's first two collections of poetry, Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight. Long out of print, Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight brought Doty to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252068424
• ISBN13: 9780252068423
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Turtle, Swan & Bethlehem in Broad Daylight

Fans experienced in Doty's unique vision of our world will appreciate this early collection combining his first two volumes (now out of print). Certainly lacking the later intensity which would define this celebrated poet (Atlantis' "Homo Will Not Inherit" and Sweet Machine's finest: "Mercy on Broadway"), these poems account for the poet's youth, a topic later dismissed following the sucess of My Alexandria. The artist here is very much in development yet still images describing genuine affection for our decaying world prevail (a theme consistently "Doty"). Turtle, Swan's title poem introduces Wally Roberts, though it's hardly a lamenting cry that we'll see later in Heaven's Coast. Beauty exists here. From an ancient Egyptian headdress to a senile old neighbor, Doy examines his world in scientific detail: a talent which not only inspires delicate, lyrical poems but also heals a breaking spirit, focusing the voice on anything lustrous. Isn't that why we read Doty? To, if only for an instance, see the world as he does: fashionable and redemptive--"our miracle / our hour"?