Sweet Machine: Poems
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 inSweet Machineof 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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.