Deep Lane
by Mark Doty
W. Norton & Company. 96 pages, $25.95
DEEP LANE is Mark Doty’s eighth collection of poetry. In books as wide-ranging as My Alexandria (1993) and Turtle, Swan, and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight (1999), along with memoirs such as Heaven’s Coast (1996), Doty (who long ago was a professor of mine) has explored life, love, and loss, particularly during the AIDS era. His poems have always been thoughtful and reflective, but this collection has an autumnal, melancholy tone that’s new to his work.
Deep Lane (which appears to be the name of a road) is Doty’s rumination on mortality. The opening poem finds him digging in his garden. Looking at the various tubers and grasses he encounters, he begins to speculate on the inevitable fate of us all. This theme of inquiry continues as he walks with his dog Ned past a graveyard and finds himself literally with one foot in a newly dug grave. While this may sound contrived when summarized, Doty’s best poems have a simplicity and an immediacy that make such situations seem totally organic. Indeed, it is the searching, intimate quality of his poetry that gives his work much of its power, and makes each one seem like a journey in which the reader is personally involved alongside the poet. “Don’t you wish the road of excess/ led to the palace of wisdom, wouldn’t that be nice?” Doty asks in one of the sections of his new poem. This is the first time, I believe, that such a melancholy note of weariness has entered the poet’s world view. Encountering a pond whose fish are emerging from hibernation, he spots one lone fish and notes, “A heron ate his mate.” Those familiar with the poet’s history might make a connection here to his partner Wally, who died of AIDS many years ago. Here and elsewhere he seems to be asking: What does a lifetime of perception lead to? Where does consciousness go? If everything and everyone is ultimately consumed by darkness, what’s the point? In one poem, Doty makes a wounded deer a symbol for an entire generation ravaged by AIDS. He sets this up swiftly and economically by calling the deer “The King of Fire Island.” The deer is an echo of Elizabeth Bishop’s great poem, “The Moose.” But whereas Bishop’s poem was all about a sudden, bewildering encounter with wildness and the other, Doty identifies with the deer. “Where else could he have lived?” he asks. Because of his wounded nature, the deer is literally dependent upon the kindness of strangers in order to survive. Like Doty, the deer is a survivor. But the deer is ultimately doomed like everything else: his consciousness, too, lost to time. There is both forgiveness and restlessness in these poems, as Doty seems ready to embrace himself now, not only as a gay poet, but as a person who is growing older. For those who’ve shared his journey over the years, Deep Lane is an essential installment, the latest missive from an extraordinarily gifted and giving poet. _____________________________________________________ Dale Boyer is a poet based in Chicago.
