Items related to Sweet Machine: Poems
Synopsis
A collection of lyrical and joyful poems explores the "sweet machine" of the body as a vibrant, sensual, living thing
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Reviews
There is a familiarity here, in this, Doty's fifth collection of poetry in 11 years. Poems like "Favrile" are reminiscent of earlier poems like "Difference" and "Description" and epitomize Doty's love of words and thoughtful digressions. There is also typical Doty subject matter (fabric, flowers, fog) that links, like a chain of inspiration, book to book. Doty has proved himself capable of lavish vocabulary and technical mastery, but one has a stronger sense in Sweet Machine of his absorption of life's dark, unredeemable underside. Even beauty, Doty's ceaseless redeemer, seems unable, at times, to grace the darkness here, to offer hope, potential, future: "I am forty-one years old / and ready to get down / on my knees to a kitchen bowl / full of live green . . . ." It is this quality that makes the work more real than any of Doty's previous collections. It is not that he has suddenly relinquished his belief in life's beauty or failed to find transcendence, nor has he seen for the first time the ugly side of life; it is that he has weighed them yin/yang-like in a balance of perception and given them their equal due. He has taken on his losses in a Crane-like "it is bitter, but it is mine" fashion and sees salvation as if for the first time, joy and beauty as rare and precious commodities. Janet St. John
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Sweet Machine : Poems
Published by
HarperCollins Publishers, 1998
ISBN 10: 0060553707
ISBN 13: 9780060553708
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Better World Books: West, Reno, NV, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 5973052-75
Quantity: 1 available
Stock Image
Sweet Machine: Poems
Published by
HarperFlamingo Canada, New York, NY, 1998
ISBN 10: 0060553707
ISBN 13: 9780060553708
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: West With The Night, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hard cover. First edition. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 117 p. Audience: General/trade. Fine in very good dust jacket. very light shelfwear to the jacket, (near fine), book like new, first printing. Seller Inventory # Alibris.0024592
Quantity: 1 available
Seller Image
Sweet Machine: Poems
Published by
HarperFlamingo, 1998
ISBN 10: 0060553707
ISBN 13: 9780060553708
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Yesterday's Muse, ABAA, ILAB, IOBA, Webster, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hard Cover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. First edition. Remainder mark. 1998 Hard Cover. x, 117 pp. Mark Doty's last two award-winning collections of poetry, as well as his acclaimed memoir Heaven's Coast, used the devastation of AIDS as a lens through which to consider questions of loss, love and identity. The poems in Sweet Machine see the world from a new, hard-won perspective: A coming back to life, after so much death, a way of seeing the body's "sweet machine" not simply as a time bomb, but also as a vibrant, sensual, living thing. These poems are themselves "sweet machines" - lyrical, exuberant and joyous - and they mark yet another milestone in the extraordinary career of one of our most distinguished and accomplished poets. Seller Inventory # 2327635
Quantity: 1 available