The Poet's Voice: Mark Doty Coming to Greenwich

Mark Doty, renowned author of poetry and prose, will give a reading in the Greenwich Library Meeting Room on Sunday, May 11 at 2 p.m. 

Praised by the New York Times for his "dazzling, tactile grasp of the world," Doty was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2011.

The author of eight books of poetry, Mark Doty is the only American poet to have won Great Britain's T. S. Eliot Prize.  Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems was published in 2008 and won the National Book Award.  The judges for this award wrote that Doty was, "Elegant, plain-spoken, and unflinching.”

Doty has also received two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize, whose citation noted, "Mark Doty's poems extend the range of the American lyric."

The poet and memoirist Patricia Hampl compared Doty to Keats in being “poised on exact perception. When he sees the ocean—the salt spray hits you.”  Says Doty himself, poetry must “sing me something”.

Mark Doty is Professor/Writer in Residence at Rutgers University and is a frequent guest at Columbia University, Hunter College, and NYU. He is the author of three memoirs: the bestselling Dog Years (2007), Firebird (1999), and Heaven's Coast (1997), as well as a book about craft and criticism, The Art of Description: World Into Word and a book-length essay, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon (2001). He is currently at work on a memoir that centers on his poetic relationship with Walt Whitman, entitled What Is the Grass. He is also working on a new volume of poems, Deep Lane. Doty lives in New York City and on the eastern end of Long Island. Visit www.markdoty.orgto learn more.

The Poet's Voice, now in its 37th season, is supported by the Friends of Greenwich Library and by the Horace E. Manacher Poetry Fund. This event is open to all at no charge. Books will be available for purchase and signing after the reading. For more information, contact Alice Bonvenuto at abonvenuto@greenwichlibrary.org or call (203) 622-7919.