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Atlantis
The poignant, accomplished new collection of poetry from the author of My Alexandria--1993 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Times Book Award, 1993 National Book Award Finalist.
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1995
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741 people want to read
About the author
Mark Doty
91 books336 followersMark Doty is a poet, essayist, and memoirist. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Deep Lane and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award. He lives in New York, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
August 14, 2018
3.5 i love poetry, it is often soothing to me, makes me look at things in different ways. This book came in my Strand book box, and it was a poet of which I had never heard. It highlights the beauty of the natural world, some striking images are invoked. It is also about death, death due to AIDS, but also the natural death due to their natural cycle in nature. Sunflowers, green crabs and even mackerel. It is hard to describe poetry without including a sample, unless it is a widely known poet. Unfortunately, however, all the poems are too lengthy, and I would be thing way to long. So you'll have to take my word for it, if you enjoy poetry give this one a chance.
December 13, 2017
A brave candling theory
I'm making for you,
little lamplight; believe,
and ripple out free
as shimmer is. Go.
Don't go. Go.
I'm not sure anyone writes about death better than Mark Doty does, but I'm not sure anyone writes about life better than Mark Doty does, either. Atlantis is the poetry collection that deals the most directly with the death of his partner, Wally, from AIDS, but when I think about it ten days after finishing it, I see a riot of colors and textures: brightly hued half-submerged boats in the harbor; vivid shades of nature, of sea and sky, of textiles and precious gems and metals. The animals are lively and life-giving; the men stop living when they die, but not a moment sooner than that. The connections Doty draws among all of these things are rapturous and deeply felt, and as a reader, you feel profoundly sad, but also profoundly grateful to be alive.
I'm making for you,
little lamplight; believe,
and ripple out free
as shimmer is. Go.
Don't go. Go.
I'm not sure anyone writes about death better than Mark Doty does, but I'm not sure anyone writes about life better than Mark Doty does, either. Atlantis is the poetry collection that deals the most directly with the death of his partner, Wally, from AIDS, but when I think about it ten days after finishing it, I see a riot of colors and textures: brightly hued half-submerged boats in the harbor; vivid shades of nature, of sea and sky, of textiles and precious gems and metals. The animals are lively and life-giving; the men stop living when they die, but not a moment sooner than that. The connections Doty draws among all of these things are rapturous and deeply felt, and as a reader, you feel profoundly sad, but also profoundly grateful to be alive.
September 8, 2016
This book is pretty amazing. With the exception of Keats, I don’t usually read books of poetry these days. I’m a prose/novel person, because I like getting invested in characters, and in general I just love a good story. That said, I plan to read more of Doty’s work. And I will probably end up re-reading Atlantis, because there is clearly A LOT there.
Okay, to start with the title, I’m assuming it is no coincidence that the title of this collection is the same as one of Hart Crane’s poems. (After all, there are no “coincidences” when it comes to literary analysis, right? ;) ) That could work, as Doty touches on some similar concepts such as the connections between the human experience and the universal, and the significance of place (the urban city, water). If no allusion to Crane is intended and Doty is connecting only to the myth of the lost city that also rings true, as Atlantis seems to include the theme of searching for a (possibly only mythic) place of acceptance and identity, as well as function as an elegy for a world devastated by AIDs.
I love how many of Doty’s poems center around finding beauty in aspects of life and the natural world that many would see as only ugly or at best unremarkable, like decrepit old boats along the shore. On a deeper level, Doty seems to find beauty intertwined even in death and darkness, just as Whitman does in poems like “Scented Herbage of my Breast.” In fact, reading Whitman’s poems about death alongside Doty’s creates a powerful and poignant comparison. While a similarity can certainly be seen between the touching ending of the poem “Atlantis” ( listing the different victims and those who still “hold” them) and Whitman’s battlefield vigils beside young, dead and dying men, overall I see more difference than similarity. Bobby’s story in “Grosse Fuge” captures that contrast perfectly. While untimely death is beautiful and romanticized as well as tragic in Whitman’s poems, the casualties of the AIDs epidemic are still often ostracized and demonized rather than mourned as fallen heroes, like those who fall in battle are by the general public. While Whitman writes of an intimacy between the dead/dying and those who care for them, Doty writes of a cold, lonely death. A man no one wants to actually touch (even the medical professional who wore gloves when they were not needed) or comfort. Really powerful stuff.
Okay, to start with the title, I’m assuming it is no coincidence that the title of this collection is the same as one of Hart Crane’s poems. (After all, there are no “coincidences” when it comes to literary analysis, right? ;) ) That could work, as Doty touches on some similar concepts such as the connections between the human experience and the universal, and the significance of place (the urban city, water). If no allusion to Crane is intended and Doty is connecting only to the myth of the lost city that also rings true, as Atlantis seems to include the theme of searching for a (possibly only mythic) place of acceptance and identity, as well as function as an elegy for a world devastated by AIDs.
I love how many of Doty’s poems center around finding beauty in aspects of life and the natural world that many would see as only ugly or at best unremarkable, like decrepit old boats along the shore. On a deeper level, Doty seems to find beauty intertwined even in death and darkness, just as Whitman does in poems like “Scented Herbage of my Breast.” In fact, reading Whitman’s poems about death alongside Doty’s creates a powerful and poignant comparison. While a similarity can certainly be seen between the touching ending of the poem “Atlantis” ( listing the different victims and those who still “hold” them) and Whitman’s battlefield vigils beside young, dead and dying men, overall I see more difference than similarity. Bobby’s story in “Grosse Fuge” captures that contrast perfectly. While untimely death is beautiful and romanticized as well as tragic in Whitman’s poems, the casualties of the AIDs epidemic are still often ostracized and demonized rather than mourned as fallen heroes, like those who fall in battle are by the general public. While Whitman writes of an intimacy between the dead/dying and those who care for them, Doty writes of a cold, lonely death. A man no one wants to actually touch (even the medical professional who wore gloves when they were not needed) or comfort. Really powerful stuff.
March 6, 2008
In my extensive reading of poetry, I have studied no other poet as much as I have Mark Doty. With each book of his I read, I am able to more quickly notice and learn new craft lessons, partly because I am so familiar with his style and partly because his content is so immediately discernible to me (due to certain parallels in our lives). With this collection, I was able to see what his critics are saying when they point out how his descriptions of color and light tend to meander a bit too long. However, being true to his craft, it seems Doty has listened to this feedback, dissecting himself and this tendency of his in the poem “Description.” Here, he conjectures that this practice actually reveals some “encoded desire” and that by pointing these things out, he’s really searching for the “brightness” in himself, which is something we could all do a little more often (5). I feel this is why readers keep turning to Doty’s work, because amidst all the ugliness in this world, he lingers long enough on its beauty to find joy. And for me, it is a joy to keep reading his work and to see my life as a gay man reflected in such well crafted poetry.
Read
August 17, 2023gorrrrgeous little piece I swam into on the train. Very much a sequel-feeling to My Alexandria, which I prefer to this (felt it had more consistently poems that sweep me away) but let's not sleep on Atlantis. the AIDS poems have advanced, into history, it's a trench. 'migratory' was nicely covered in one of john's classes and I feel this little sense of what's between the spirit and skin has become a mantra (of a sort). Also I was more aware here of writing into the tradition via content-form, the appropriation and distortion of familiar modernist lines to develop a wider texture. That's a very annoying way of phrasing it - I'm thinking of the poem 'Couture', where mark asks About gowns, / the Old Masters, / were they ever wrong? &&& Talk about your mellow / fruitfulness! Smoky alto, / thou hast thy music
it's very nice & as hoped for with mark. still prefer Alexandria.... ... but an icon there's a jarman-ness to his visions of the above, the spirit, the lightness of the line
it's very nice & as hoped for with mark. still prefer Alexandria.... ... but an icon there's a jarman-ness to his visions of the above, the spirit, the lightness of the line
January 24, 2022
Mark Doty is such an extraordinary poet. I already look forward to coming back to this book in the future.
March 30, 2011
Mark Doty looks at things most of us wouldn't notice and turns them into meaning. Rows of frozen mackeral, a crab shell. He finds consolation for death in the ocean's cast offs. In this graceful collection, none stands out above the rest..."the price of gleaming."
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June 25, 2018I think I love the ‘idea’ of poetry. I love the thought that there are poets and poems out in the world. It feels very romantic to me. I just have to accept that I will probably never be part of that world. And it’s ok. We’ll leave it where it is. :)
May 12, 2011
On a first read "Atlantis" can be painfully slow reading, as Doty seems to spend the first half of every poem lost in detailed description. However, upon a second or third reading, my appreciation for the collection deepened significantly. For lurking underneath much of the description are the painful themes of loss and slow decay. Indeed, the central eponymous poem, "Atlantis," chronicles the death of Doty’s lover Wally Roberts.
By far my favorite poem in the collection, however, is "Homo Will Not Inherit," in which the speaker monologues powerfully against a flyer declaring that “Homo Will Not Inherit: Repent & be saved." Readers should note, though, that "Homo Will Not Inherit" is in many ways uncharacteristic of the collection. Most of the poems in “Atlantis” are calm and subtle.
Doty's language focuses very heavily on words relating to light, smoke and fog, flowers, precious stones, summer, and water. In fact, certain words seem to appear in practically every poem. Despite this repetition, Doty's language is very rich. Here are some of my favorite examples:
"The petals curling into licks of fire."
"The brilliance that candles after rain."
"The scraped, accidental intensity of color."
"The column of feathering steam."
"The avenue’s shimmered azaleas of gasoline."
As Doty muses, "What is description, after all, but encoded desire?"
By far my favorite poem in the collection, however, is "Homo Will Not Inherit," in which the speaker monologues powerfully against a flyer declaring that “Homo Will Not Inherit: Repent & be saved." Readers should note, though, that "Homo Will Not Inherit" is in many ways uncharacteristic of the collection. Most of the poems in “Atlantis” are calm and subtle.
Doty's language focuses very heavily on words relating to light, smoke and fog, flowers, precious stones, summer, and water. In fact, certain words seem to appear in practically every poem. Despite this repetition, Doty's language is very rich. Here are some of my favorite examples:
"The petals curling into licks of fire."
"The brilliance that candles after rain."
"The scraped, accidental intensity of color."
"The column of feathering steam."
"The avenue’s shimmered azaleas of gasoline."
As Doty muses, "What is description, after all, but encoded desire?"
July 31, 2007
This is an easy to read book of poems that really captures the beauty underlying what is horrible in the world.
"the world is made beautiful by its beautiful clothes."
That may be a misquote, but you get the point.
"the world is made beautiful by its beautiful clothes."
That may be a misquote, but you get the point.
March 31, 2025
I don't know that I need to say much when it comes to one of my most favorite poets working today. Mark Doty has been an inspiration for years and I fairly swoon when I'm indulging in his poetry. I read 'Atlantis' years ago, when I first heard him read at some poetry event somewhere. It was sometime in the second half of the 1990s. By then, AIDS had already ravaged the gay community, taking Doty's long-time companion in 1994, and later claiming the life of my own partner.
Doty is delicate with his words, his rhythms, his timing. He's also brutal in his imagery, his thoughts, and his insights. Several of his poems are reflections on the AIDS crisis at the time of publication. Many are elegies and mournful songs for his own loss. He writes of loneliness, of widowhood, not in exact terms, but in visions of vast, cold shorelines of New England, of derelict fishing boats, and heaven's lavender skies. But no poem in this collection hits harder than "New Dog."
I didn't remember the poem until I read it this time. I'm certain now that I'd heard Doty read it years before. It still makes me go numb.
Doty is delicate with his words, his rhythms, his timing. He's also brutal in his imagery, his thoughts, and his insights. Several of his poems are reflections on the AIDS crisis at the time of publication. Many are elegies and mournful songs for his own loss. He writes of loneliness, of widowhood, not in exact terms, but in visions of vast, cold shorelines of New England, of derelict fishing boats, and heaven's lavender skies. But no poem in this collection hits harder than "New Dog."
I didn't remember the poem until I read it this time. I'm certain now that I'd heard Doty read it years before. It still makes me go numb.
June 12, 2020
"Homo Will Not Inherit," "Atlantis," and "Nocturne in Black and Gold" are all worth the price of admission. I admire Doty's specificity with color and water; the book reminded me how much I've let my own lexicon for describing nature completely atrophy because of the urban grey I plopped myself into.
The book is organized very well; it will dawn on you that the first section or two are about more than they seem to be about. Unabashedly florid, and indicative of a luminosity capable with words, Atlantis has so many good moments, and Doty so accomplished in his intent and language, that it is easy to forgive the ornateness, especially ornateness as queer as this. The skillful, delightfully gay exuberance obviates any and all concerns with repetition.
The book is organized very well; it will dawn on you that the first section or two are about more than they seem to be about. Unabashedly florid, and indicative of a luminosity capable with words, Atlantis has so many good moments, and Doty so accomplished in his intent and language, that it is easy to forgive the ornateness, especially ornateness as queer as this. The skillful, delightfully gay exuberance obviates any and all concerns with repetition.
August 16, 2018
What a beautiful volume of words. Description is powerful and meaningful, as Doty teaches us. His gorgeous musings on nature and meditations on death were so moving. I loved reading this and can see myself reading it again and again. I can't wait to read more of Doty's work.
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December 13, 2011Mark Doty's third collection, MY ALEXANDRIA, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award, and his new volume of poems, ATLANTIS, crowns its predecessor's substantial achievements. Its mythical title notwithstanding, the realm of Atlantis is fully human, subject to forces that make most things seem "fallen down, broken apart, carried away." Yet among Doty's notable strengths is his ability to celebrate this realm of grief and loss as a place that nonetheless offers an array of "gorgeous[ness]."
For instance, in "Crepe de Chine," a poem that resonates with both splendor and trash, a drag queen, walking along a Manhattan avenue, becomes intoxicated by shop windows filled with giant bottles of perfume, then by the various glassed displays of pastries and flowers: "I want to wear it," the speaker says of this lavish excess, "I want to put the whole big thing / on my head, I want . . . / / [to] take the little florists' shops / and twist them into something / for my hair, forced spiky branches / and a thousand tulips." In a world where signs of wreckage stain and fade a landscape increasingly depopulated by plague, and where so much is beyond our control, the conclusion's campy defiance reverberates like a horn blown in a Renaissance court: "look at me built and rebuilt, / / torn down to make way, / excavated, trumped up, tricked out, / done, darling, / / in every sense of the word. Now, / you call me / Evening in Paris, call me Shalimar, / call me Crepe de Chine."
Doty's attentive eye is equally at home in the natural world; indeed, while in poems like "Crepe de Chine" and "Two Cities" he seems guided by the Elizabethan-drenched and urban soul of Hart Crane, in others he seems led by Elizabeth Bishop, perhaps the best observer of the Atlantic coast's various forms of cold, clear knowledge. "At the Boatyard" even features the appearance of a "whiskered, placid" seal, an homage to Bishop's twin and totem in "At the Fishhouses." For Bishop and Doty, description is an ethos as well as an aesthetic, commanding us to honor otherness by lending it our full sensuous and "self-forgetful" concentration, as Bishop wrote of Darwin, before we begin to form conceptions. Perception and conception, nature and city, flower and frost -- all these supposed opposites come together in the rich fusion and profusion of "Grosse Fuge." Written after Cape Cod was visited in rapid succession by Hurricane Bob and a false spring, the poem contrapuntally weaves the storm's aftermath, a friend's temporary recovery from AIDS-related dementia, and the experiencing of Beethoven's late quartets. "What can you expect, in a world that blooms / and freezes all at once?" Doty asks at the end of the poem. The answer lies in the musical form itself, "this stream of theme and reiteration, statement / and return" which closes with no great pronouncement, simply a reckoning: "There is no resolution in the fugue."
A partner's death from AIDS is the core of the six-poem sequence that gives ATLANTIS its title, and the core as well of Doty's just-released prose memoir, Heaven's Coast. Its lyrical treatment of time, as well as the attention paid to the various chapters' natural or urban settings -- Cape Cod, Boston, New York, Vermont -- link the memoir to Atlantis in ways both frictive and enriching.
The affirmative notes struck in "Crepe de Chine" -- "look at me built and rebuilt" -- echo beneath the multiple and overlapping stories of loss in HEAVEN'S COAST, but in the memoir these notes occur polyphonically rather than arising from a solo. For HEAVEN'S COAST isn't only Doty's story; it's the story of AIDS and the ravenous swath it has cut through his -- and our -- community. Against the disease's hideous gaping hunger, Doty posits the imperfect but healing construct of friendship, the families we choose and make and remake and also find ourselves remade by. "It's the drag queen's perennial message, after all," Doty says in one of the memoir's final chapters: "we're all self-made here."
(originally published in PLOUGHSHARES)
For instance, in "Crepe de Chine," a poem that resonates with both splendor and trash, a drag queen, walking along a Manhattan avenue, becomes intoxicated by shop windows filled with giant bottles of perfume, then by the various glassed displays of pastries and flowers: "I want to wear it," the speaker says of this lavish excess, "I want to put the whole big thing / on my head, I want . . . / / [to] take the little florists' shops / and twist them into something / for my hair, forced spiky branches / and a thousand tulips." In a world where signs of wreckage stain and fade a landscape increasingly depopulated by plague, and where so much is beyond our control, the conclusion's campy defiance reverberates like a horn blown in a Renaissance court: "look at me built and rebuilt, / / torn down to make way, / excavated, trumped up, tricked out, / done, darling, / / in every sense of the word. Now, / you call me / Evening in Paris, call me Shalimar, / call me Crepe de Chine."
Doty's attentive eye is equally at home in the natural world; indeed, while in poems like "Crepe de Chine" and "Two Cities" he seems guided by the Elizabethan-drenched and urban soul of Hart Crane, in others he seems led by Elizabeth Bishop, perhaps the best observer of the Atlantic coast's various forms of cold, clear knowledge. "At the Boatyard" even features the appearance of a "whiskered, placid" seal, an homage to Bishop's twin and totem in "At the Fishhouses." For Bishop and Doty, description is an ethos as well as an aesthetic, commanding us to honor otherness by lending it our full sensuous and "self-forgetful" concentration, as Bishop wrote of Darwin, before we begin to form conceptions. Perception and conception, nature and city, flower and frost -- all these supposed opposites come together in the rich fusion and profusion of "Grosse Fuge." Written after Cape Cod was visited in rapid succession by Hurricane Bob and a false spring, the poem contrapuntally weaves the storm's aftermath, a friend's temporary recovery from AIDS-related dementia, and the experiencing of Beethoven's late quartets. "What can you expect, in a world that blooms / and freezes all at once?" Doty asks at the end of the poem. The answer lies in the musical form itself, "this stream of theme and reiteration, statement / and return" which closes with no great pronouncement, simply a reckoning: "There is no resolution in the fugue."
A partner's death from AIDS is the core of the six-poem sequence that gives ATLANTIS its title, and the core as well of Doty's just-released prose memoir, Heaven's Coast. Its lyrical treatment of time, as well as the attention paid to the various chapters' natural or urban settings -- Cape Cod, Boston, New York, Vermont -- link the memoir to Atlantis in ways both frictive and enriching.
The affirmative notes struck in "Crepe de Chine" -- "look at me built and rebuilt" -- echo beneath the multiple and overlapping stories of loss in HEAVEN'S COAST, but in the memoir these notes occur polyphonically rather than arising from a solo. For HEAVEN'S COAST isn't only Doty's story; it's the story of AIDS and the ravenous swath it has cut through his -- and our -- community. Against the disease's hideous gaping hunger, Doty posits the imperfect but healing construct of friendship, the families we choose and make and remake and also find ourselves remade by. "It's the drag queen's perennial message, after all," Doty says in one of the memoir's final chapters: "we're all self-made here."
(originally published in PLOUGHSHARES)
April 3, 2011
Mark Doty – “Atlantis”
HarperCollins Books, 1995
Mark Doty seems to paint one fluid stream of pictures in his brilliant collection of poetry, “Atlantis.” He provides a thought provoking, and world questioning escape by truly mastering the art of flow, making his poems run like a stream trickling over tiny stones. Though each poem illuminates a different moment, they all seem to run together in one glorious landscape. The attention to detail Doty pays to the smallest things or moments is brilliant. He notices things most people wouldn’t notice and interprets situations in very unique ways. For example, in “A Letter from the Coast,” Doty witnesses some type of ball gathering in town. The men and women are dressed head to toe in gowns and tuxes. Doty reveals his individual insight on the situation and observes, “…Their secrets/ visible here, public, as so many are,” which is not a typical observation of such a glamorous event. In the first poem, “Faith,” of Doty’s “Atlantis” section, a dream about losing a dog is transformed into his experience with an ill friend. He vulnerably states, “I swear sometimes/ when I put my head to his chest/ I can hear the virus humming/ like a refrigerator.” The chilling image of two Doty with his head lying on a dear friend’s chest, in a calm room evokes a whirl of emotions with a few simple lines. This use of abstract imagery is booming through each and every poem creating a vivid, tangible picture.
In his collection of poetry, “Atlantis,” Mark Doty provides perfect examples of how to defamiliarize words. For instance, in “A Letter from the Coast,” he describes the ball in town as, “another storm/ in town, too, a veritable cyclone/ of gowns and wigs.” He also describes the glamorous women as having, “Veils, seedpearled with the first rain.” His innate talent for shining new light on familiar things causes the cracks between each line to emit luminous new insight. Near the end of the poem, he says to his mystery woman, “A million earrings rinsed in the dawn,/ I wish you were here.” This image resonates like the motherly feeling of a cozy blanket’s embrace.
Doty also has a way of subtly introducing the realizations he comes to throughout this glorious journey of “Atlantis,” with which the reader is allowed to join him. In, “To the Storm God,” he discovers rebirth amidst the unnerving disaster a storm has caused. The moment he discovered this bittersweet renewal, Doty taunts the storm god by saying, “Turn me in any wind, go ahead/ break my house apart./ How else could I learn to read/ the characters scrawling/ this houseboat’s revealed canvas,/ how else would I learn to say them.” The main thing I am learning from his poems is how to take words out of their original context and the typical adjectives used to describe them. This allows for a refreshing thought process and allows me to pull from any word in existence to organically describe the common aspects of our world.
HarperCollins Books, 1995
Mark Doty seems to paint one fluid stream of pictures in his brilliant collection of poetry, “Atlantis.” He provides a thought provoking, and world questioning escape by truly mastering the art of flow, making his poems run like a stream trickling over tiny stones. Though each poem illuminates a different moment, they all seem to run together in one glorious landscape. The attention to detail Doty pays to the smallest things or moments is brilliant. He notices things most people wouldn’t notice and interprets situations in very unique ways. For example, in “A Letter from the Coast,” Doty witnesses some type of ball gathering in town. The men and women are dressed head to toe in gowns and tuxes. Doty reveals his individual insight on the situation and observes, “…Their secrets/ visible here, public, as so many are,” which is not a typical observation of such a glamorous event. In the first poem, “Faith,” of Doty’s “Atlantis” section, a dream about losing a dog is transformed into his experience with an ill friend. He vulnerably states, “I swear sometimes/ when I put my head to his chest/ I can hear the virus humming/ like a refrigerator.” The chilling image of two Doty with his head lying on a dear friend’s chest, in a calm room evokes a whirl of emotions with a few simple lines. This use of abstract imagery is booming through each and every poem creating a vivid, tangible picture.
In his collection of poetry, “Atlantis,” Mark Doty provides perfect examples of how to defamiliarize words. For instance, in “A Letter from the Coast,” he describes the ball in town as, “another storm/ in town, too, a veritable cyclone/ of gowns and wigs.” He also describes the glamorous women as having, “Veils, seedpearled with the first rain.” His innate talent for shining new light on familiar things causes the cracks between each line to emit luminous new insight. Near the end of the poem, he says to his mystery woman, “A million earrings rinsed in the dawn,/ I wish you were here.” This image resonates like the motherly feeling of a cozy blanket’s embrace.
Doty also has a way of subtly introducing the realizations he comes to throughout this glorious journey of “Atlantis,” with which the reader is allowed to join him. In, “To the Storm God,” he discovers rebirth amidst the unnerving disaster a storm has caused. The moment he discovered this bittersweet renewal, Doty taunts the storm god by saying, “Turn me in any wind, go ahead/ break my house apart./ How else could I learn to read/ the characters scrawling/ this houseboat’s revealed canvas,/ how else would I learn to say them.” The main thing I am learning from his poems is how to take words out of their original context and the typical adjectives used to describe them. This allows for a refreshing thought process and allows me to pull from any word in existence to organically describe the common aspects of our world.
January 4, 2023
When I started this collection, I'd just returned from a visit to the East Coast that had me Googling waterfront real estate and shiplap. So, I was perfectly primed to enjoy Doty's crisp, imagistic portrayal of life on the seaboard.
However, a few poems in, an unexpected through-line of heartbreak began to subtly ebb and flow between the naturalist tableau as Doty described deeply personal reckonings with the AIDS epidemic. Each poem invokes both an unbearable sense of splendor and of inescapable decay - in nature, in the ill.
After realizing this theme, the title feels quite powerful.
--
A favorite bit, from "Description":
My salt marsh
--mine, I call it, because
these day-hammered fields
of dazzled horizontals
undulate, summers,
inside me and out --
how can I say what it is?
Sea lavender shivers
over the tidewater steel.
A million minnows ally
with their million shadows
(lucky we'll never need
to know whose is whose).
The bud of storm loosens:
watered paint poured
dark blue on the edge
of the page. Haloed grasses,
gilt shadow-edged body of dune...
However, a few poems in, an unexpected through-line of heartbreak began to subtly ebb and flow between the naturalist tableau as Doty described deeply personal reckonings with the AIDS epidemic. Each poem invokes both an unbearable sense of splendor and of inescapable decay - in nature, in the ill.
After realizing this theme, the title feels quite powerful.
--
A favorite bit, from "Description":
My salt marsh
--mine, I call it, because
these day-hammered fields
of dazzled horizontals
undulate, summers,
inside me and out --
how can I say what it is?
Sea lavender shivers
over the tidewater steel.
A million minnows ally
with their million shadows
(lucky we'll never need
to know whose is whose).
The bud of storm loosens:
watered paint poured
dark blue on the edge
of the page. Haloed grasses,
gilt shadow-edged body of dune...
March 14, 2013
I love Mark Doty. I'm as much his groupie as one can be for a poet. I've seen him read several times, and he always makes me weep. His poems are both clever and important. Whether contemplating our souls, wondering "if we could be opened / into this / if the smallest chambers / of ourselves / similarly, / revealed some sky" (9), or meditating on age, relating that "I felt both young and awake / which I never felt / when I was young" (52), his work provides some insightful perspectives on life's major questions. He dedicates this book to his partner Wally whom he watched die of AIDS, and while the book is filled with the somber consequence that such experiences can afford a writer, it never veers into the melodramatic. The focus is entirely universal and well worth multiple reads.
October 19, 2021
"This month the new comes / so dizzyingly quick it coexists / with all autumn's evidence... / How are we to read this nameless season - renewal, promise, / confusion? Should we be glad or terrified / at how quickly things are replaced? / Never again the particulars / of that August garden: waving cosmos, / each form's crisp darkness in relief / against the stars. / No way to know what's gone, only the new flowerings, the brilliance / that candles after rain" (Grosse Fuge, 19).
I love it when I serendipitously pick a poetry collection and it corresponds with the season; Doty's autumn / October allusions in his poems are lovely. I felt more compelled by the first half of the collection (in the sleepy coastal town) than the latter, but it did offer some insight into observations Kern makes about the city, specifically New York, and queer spaces. This is a really beautiful and intimate collection with great diction and ties to visual art. You know how sometimes there is a poem that hits you in the chest like a freight train? "Atlantis: I. Faith" was that for me. 3.5 stars.
Here is a link if you want to feel things too: https://nerdytalksbookblog.wordpress....
"Peony silks, / in wax-light: / that petal-sheen, / gold or apricot or rose / candled into - / what to call it, / lumina, aurora, aureole? / About gowns, / the Old Masters, / were they ever wrong? / The penitent Magdalen's / wrapped in a yellow / so voluptuous / she seems to wear / all she's renounced" (Couture, 14).
I love it when I serendipitously pick a poetry collection and it corresponds with the season; Doty's autumn / October allusions in his poems are lovely. I felt more compelled by the first half of the collection (in the sleepy coastal town) than the latter, but it did offer some insight into observations Kern makes about the city, specifically New York, and queer spaces. This is a really beautiful and intimate collection with great diction and ties to visual art. You know how sometimes there is a poem that hits you in the chest like a freight train? "Atlantis: I. Faith" was that for me. 3.5 stars.
Here is a link if you want to feel things too: https://nerdytalksbookblog.wordpress....
"Peony silks, / in wax-light: / that petal-sheen, / gold or apricot or rose / candled into - / what to call it, / lumina, aurora, aureole? / About gowns, / the Old Masters, / were they ever wrong? / The penitent Magdalen's / wrapped in a yellow / so voluptuous / she seems to wear / all she's renounced" (Couture, 14).
September 4, 2018
I picked up this 1995 Mark Doty collection out of one of those "little free library" boxes. I had admired several individual Doty poems I had read in the past and took it as a sign it was time to get back to some poetry. In short, the poems that comprise almost the first half of the book are flowing over with Doty's skills, yet weighted down by many metaphors in their search for something profound.
Then we get the suite of poems entitled "Atlantis", and Doty's heart breaks in and that magical thing - I guess you would call it transcendence - happens, and I was washed into this pained and loving reflection of what it was like to be personally impacted by AIDS in the 90's. Then, even though the remainder of the poems in the collection again embrace those metaphors - the eternal ongoing impact of nature through the forces of water, tides, marshes, storms, rust, etc. - remain grounded in the discoveries of one who has confronted mortality through the loss of his loved ones.
I was going to drop the book back off at the library box, but will keep for a while longer to savor those Atlantis poems a little more.
Then we get the suite of poems entitled "Atlantis", and Doty's heart breaks in and that magical thing - I guess you would call it transcendence - happens, and I was washed into this pained and loving reflection of what it was like to be personally impacted by AIDS in the 90's. Then, even though the remainder of the poems in the collection again embrace those metaphors - the eternal ongoing impact of nature through the forces of water, tides, marshes, storms, rust, etc. - remain grounded in the discoveries of one who has confronted mortality through the loss of his loved ones.
I was going to drop the book back off at the library box, but will keep for a while longer to savor those Atlantis poems a little more.
September 19, 2025
Mark Doty’s Atlantis is a devastating and luminous book of elegy. Written in the years of his partner’s illness and death, the poems weave loss into the textures of the natural world with extraordinary clarity.
In the title poem, Doty confesses: “I thought your illness a kind of solvent / dissolving the future a little at a time”—a line that captures the slow erasure of possibility . But almost in the same breath, he offers visions of grace: “two white emissaries unfold / like heaven’s linen, untouched, / enormous, a fluid exhalation” . This oscillation between diminishment and radiance defines the collection.
What makes Atlantis remarkable is not just its grief, but its insistence that beauty persists even in the face of devastation. The marshes, herons, tulips, and tides do not erase loss, but they exist alongside it, offering moments of reprieve.
This is elegy at its most human: heartbreaking, unflinching, yet luminous.
In the title poem, Doty confesses: “I thought your illness a kind of solvent / dissolving the future a little at a time”—a line that captures the slow erasure of possibility . But almost in the same breath, he offers visions of grace: “two white emissaries unfold / like heaven’s linen, untouched, / enormous, a fluid exhalation” . This oscillation between diminishment and radiance defines the collection.
What makes Atlantis remarkable is not just its grief, but its insistence that beauty persists even in the face of devastation. The marshes, herons, tulips, and tides do not erase loss, but they exist alongside it, offering moments of reprieve.
This is elegy at its most human: heartbreaking, unflinching, yet luminous.
May 8, 2019
[rating = B-]
I have wanted to read this, and get a copy, for the longest time! Finally getting it, and a signed one at that, I started reading it with celerity. Soon, though, I found the images repetitive and the subject matter boring or overdone. He talks a lot about AIDs and illness and drag and queerness. And this is all good and interesting, being exposed to "the Other" so to say, yet, he really goes over and over the same material. And this is dull. He often has lovely little lines, though he seems to enjoy the long poem. And in these long poems, Dotty goes on and on, seeming to try to mesh the seen and the felt, but sometimes gets caught up in one or the other, leaving the reader shortchanged. I do intent to read Deep Lane, and hopefully he will have learned something in his aging. This was not a bad collection, just rather tedious to get through.
I have wanted to read this, and get a copy, for the longest time! Finally getting it, and a signed one at that, I started reading it with celerity. Soon, though, I found the images repetitive and the subject matter boring or overdone. He talks a lot about AIDs and illness and drag and queerness. And this is all good and interesting, being exposed to "the Other" so to say, yet, he really goes over and over the same material. And this is dull. He often has lovely little lines, though he seems to enjoy the long poem. And in these long poems, Dotty goes on and on, seeming to try to mesh the seen and the felt, but sometimes gets caught up in one or the other, leaving the reader shortchanged. I do intent to read Deep Lane, and hopefully he will have learned something in his aging. This was not a bad collection, just rather tedious to get through.
March 19, 2021
I love color! Therefore, I love many, many of the poems in Mark Doty's Atlantis collection. His words bring to life his exterior and interior world. I especially love the way he blurs the edges of reality, the haze of the sun and water, the here and there of existence in is poem Fog Argument. Just superb! However, I do think he dilutes the power of the book when he goes off on a rant and rage in Homo Will Not Inherit. I keep waffling back and forth between 2 and 4 stars based on how much I dislike the Homo poem with how much I Love the Fog poem. And Let Me Be Clear, I have many friends who are homosexual. I simply did not like the poem
October 23, 2025
mackerels on display. would the lack of individuality would deliver us from unbearable grief? if no individual or memory was special, would every individual persist in the image of one another? would it be true that in such a state, we don’t feel grief? or love? to have never loved, or to never grieve? I don’t think it is too difficult to imagine that one may temporarily wish that they had never loved so as to escape their sorrow albeit for a moment.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 30, 2022
The poems in this collection absolutely knocked me over like a thousand sledgehammers encased in velvet. Doty's pieces are carefully crafted, but they also shine with such poignant luminosity and individual voice. Many of the poems center on the speaker's partner's diagnosis with AIDS and his decline and death.
June 16, 2018
My favorite poem in this collection is "Rope." Perfect description of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The poet has captured the town in many of the poems. The AIDS struggle is another theme of this collection. Beautiful poems!
March 19, 2019
a powerful collection documenting loss in its most severe forms. beautiful descriptions and images, although Doty’s use of color almost becomes satirical— certainly an expensive knowledge of
the color spectrum
the color spectrum
January 13, 2020
An absolutely beautiful collection of poetry. The author is able to catch the reflection of emotion, tragedy, and the human condition in the quiet beauty of the coast in a way that was a true joy to read.
August 13, 2018
Atlantis is filled with honesty, pain, and the experience of loving in the midst of illness and sorrow. The poems are beautiful and raw.
May 6, 2019
"one vast conjugation / of the verb / to shine"
April 8, 2021
The most beautiful book of poetry I have ever read. And I read A LOT of poetry.
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