Open House: Writers Rediefine Home - Graywolf Forum Five (Graywolf Annual) - Softcover

Doty, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555973825 ISBN 13: 9781555973827

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2003

Synopsis

Twenty Writers Define Home In All of Its Complexity and Variety

"Where do I live? I don't have a ready answer, not really, but I've realized there's something I like about not having an answer. And indeed something of that spirit―a curious, open engagement with the now, in its slippery and uncertain character―animates this book." ―Mark Doty, from his Introduction

In a shifting world, concepts of place and home take many forms. In Open House, Mark Doty gathers an impressive group of writers to describe their contemporary sense of home. Victoria Redel lives her teenage years from inside a fifteen-pound body cast―loving and hating the loss of her body; Barbara Hurd finds that within a cave, the absence of all light allows for clarity of vision; and Andrea Barrett wipes filth from a sill in her Brooklyn apartment only to realize that the dirt is actually "ash of buildings, ash of planes. Ash of people." Surroundings―walls, trees, or states of mind―are defined by our reactions to them. These essays are about how the mind can create a home―for a moment, or for a lifetime.

Contributors include Bernard Cooper, Carol Muske-Dukes, Deborah Lott, Elizabeth McCracken, Mary Morris, and Terry Tempest Williams.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Doty has received many awards and honors for his poetry, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He divides his time between New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

From the Back Cover

Contributors: Andrea Barrett, Carmen Boullosa, Karen Brennan, Derick Burleson, Kathleen Cambor, Rafael Campo, Bernard Cooper, Kathryn Davis, Carol Muske-Dukes, Michael J. Gross, Barbara Hurd, Paul Lisicky , Deborah A. Lott, Elizabeth McCracken, Honor Moore, Mary Morris, Victoria Redel, Reginald Shepherd, Terry Tempest Williams

Reviews

Describing the chaotic, polyglot world we live in now, one that disconnects us from the past and from one another, Doty asks, "So where do I live? I don't have an answer, but I've realized there's something I like about not having an answer... Sometimes home is found in unexpected places." National Book Critics Circle award-winner Doty has gathered 17 writers to consider those unexpected places, among them Andrea Barrett, Carol Muske-Dukes, Mary Morris and Paul Lisicky. For Morris, a sometime travel writer, the answer is the subways beneath New York City's streets. Barbara Hurd writes of caves, of finding herself "squeezed into a cleft in 350-million-year-old limestone...sixty feet under the earth," where she experiences a moment of sudden, unexpected intimacy with another caver. Other equally surprising "homes" are gracefully described in this fine collection.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ruminations about home evoke strong emotions, allowing poet and memoirist Mark Doty to assemble a provocative collection of 19 edgy essays that reflect 19 unique visions. Doty, who since boyhood has lived a nomadic life, kicks things off by musing over how much the "built landscape" of America has changed over the past 50 years, along with our notions of home and identity, and, sure enough, change is this involving anthology's prevailing theme. Honor Moore writes with lyrical candor about selling a much-loved house. Andrea Barrett offers an unnerving account of her recent move to Brooklyn and soul-wrenching experience of September 11. Derick Burleson tells the harrowing story of his Peace Corps sojourn in Rwanda and considers the desecration of home as one of genocide's myriad tragedies. Rafael Campo muses on the lost Cuba of his grandparents, and Reginald Shepherd shares his quest for "gay space." The overarching recognition that emerges from this compelling forum is that the one home these insightful writers, and their grateful readers, can count on is literature. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Where do I live? I don't have a ready answer, not really, but I've realized there's something I like about not having an answer. And indeed something of that spirit-a curious, open engagement with the now, in its slippery and uncertain character-animates this book. -Mark Doty, from his Introduction

Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555973825
• ISBN 13: 9781555973827
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304