Sweet Machine: Poems

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.

How does one find joy and sensuality in the wake of devastating loss?

• An Eloquent Elegy: Poems that confront the ghosts of the past while courageously turning toward the light of the present.
• The Body Reclaimed: Moving beyond the idea of the body as a 'time bomb,' these poems celebrate it as a vibrant, sensual source of life and pleasure.
• Art as Witness: Doty masterfully uses the lens of art and craft—from Venetian glass to a simple tattoo—to refract and understand profound human experience.
• From an Award-Winning Voice: Experience the masterful language and emotional depth that have made Mark Doty one of the most essential and celebrated poets of his generation.

Mark Doty's books of poetry and nonfiction prose have been honored with numerous distinctions, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and, in the United Kingdom, the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2008, he won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. He is a professor at the University of Houston, and he lives in New York City.