Mark Doty, headliner for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival

 

The only American to win Great Britain’s esteemed T.S. Eliot Prize, Mark Doty, will be a headliner for Massachusetts Poetry Festival on Saturday, May 14.

Doty, the author of eight books of poetry and four books of nonfiction, will participate in two programs.at the Festival. In the afternoon, Doty will give a presentation at the Peabody Essex Museum that will coincide with his recent book Still Life with Oysters and Lemon  and the museum’s special exhibition of Dutch and Flemish masters. Saturday evening he will participate in the headline performance with singer/songwriter Kim Richey and other poets to be announced shortly.

In addition to the T.S. Eliot Prize, Doty has won two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize. Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award in 2008.

The late Stanley Kunitz said of his work, ” With his clarity of vision and great heart, Doty stands among us an emblematic and shining presence.”

The Massachusetts Poety Festival offers you this opportunity to seeand hear  this outstanding poet.

Here is a poem by Doty:

Embrace

You weren't well or really ill yet either;

just a little tired, your handsomeness

tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought

to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

 

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.

I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.

You'd been out--at work maybe?--

having a good day, almost energetic.

 

We seemed to be moving from some old house

where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things

in disarray: that was the story of my dream,

but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative

 

by your face, the physical fact of your face:

inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.

Why so difficult, remembering the actual look

of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

 

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,

your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth

and clarity of you--warm brown tea--we held

each other for the time the dream allowed.

 

Bless you. You came back, so I could see you

once more, plainly, so I could rest against you

without thinking this happiness lessened anything,

without thinking you were alive again.