Books by Mark Doty

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.

This work pairs Mark Doty's elegy to his friend, Lynda Hull, with visual details of Murano glass. The poem originally appeared in "Sweet Machine" published by Harper Flamingo in 1998. The Murano glass is from the Getty collection.

Tells the story of a ten-year-old in top hat, cane and a red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's 'Get Happy' by an alarmed mother at the bedroom door exclaiming, in shame and exasperation: 'Son, you're a boy'.

Doty examines the nature of AIDS as opposed to other illnesses, the responses of society, the frustration of medical care and the exhausting - and occasionally uplifting - burden of caring for the dying at home.