Description

An account of the poet author’s love affair with Dutch art, and the consolations and ecstasies of the objects we gather on our way through life. We begin standing in the Met in front of a painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. Looking almost more closely than we can bear at this image from the 17th century, Doty attempts to tell us everything it holds, from pigments to forms, and above all, meaning.

This confrontation with beauty is one of many that shapes his life, from the pinwheel peppermints that emerge from his grandma’s purse in his Tennessee childhood to the cracked china platter that graces the mantelpiece in the home he shares with his dying husband. But it is Dutch still-life painting that seems to have the most to tell him. This book is his record of years spent looking closely at bunched asparagus, translucent wine glasses, curling lemon peel and the bloom on grapes.

In a brief, lucid, powerfully concentrated narrative, which tells the story of a life of self-discovery and an avid gaze, Mark Doty writes with poetic specificity and painterly clarity. In his loving description of reality, we begin to see that simply looking can be the most tender reverence.

Publisher Review

Books like this, that address the sources of creation and the sources of our humanness, come along once in a decade * Los Angeles Times * “Intimate and intensely attentive, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon deserves a place alongside slim and revelatory books … such as Rilke’s Letters on Cezanne and Mark Strand’s Hopper. ” — Geoff Dyer Somehow more than a book, something more solid, an art object of its own… a devotional text * Rumpus * A gem * Library Journal * Doty’s imagery is handsome and evocative, each figure of speech interlinked through the preoccupation with light. It constantly builds upon what came before, increasing the store of reality … It’s as though Doty were de Heem himself… * Ploughshares * Since the publication of his first volume of verse, Turtle, Swan, in 1987, Mark Doty has been recognized as one of the most accomplished poets in America. Hailed for his elegant, intelligent verse, Doty has often been compared to James Merrill, Walt Whitman and C.P. Cavafy. His syntactically complex and aesthetically profound free verse poems, odes to urban gay life, and quietly brutal elegies to his lover, Wally Roberts, have been hailed as some of the most original and arresting poetry written today. * Poetry Foundation * Still Life with Oysters and Lemon is the book that catches your eye among the bookshelves, that radiates with light and that pulses in your hand, an energy that reverberates throughout the reading and long after the last page. * Penmen Review * This small book, like the still lifes it describes, is both exquisite and important. There’s more in it than meets the eye. * Pif Magazine *