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Overall, I found Sam Taylor?s Body of the World an interesting read. It provides a unique look into the author?s mind that I feel could not have been harvested from any one individual poem. Each poem flows well, not only singularly, but in context of the other poems as well. Strong recurring themes help create this sense of flow and cohesiveness.
One of these themes is the death of the poet?s mother. This plays prominently in a number of the poems, sometimes as a continuation of a larger idea, at other times, seemingly random in its presence: a sudden flash into Taylor?s mind at that exact moment. Taylor even devotes a lengthy passage to the subject in the second half of ?Original Sin,? juxtaposing her death to the beauty of an iris that sits near her deathbed, only to be recollected by the friend who left it after his mother?s death.
Death is also present as a general theme in Body of the World. Taylor explores it in many manifestations spread throughout the length of the book. At times, it is the death of his mother, as in the above mentioned poem; at other times, it is the death of a friend, as in the poem ?Accident.? In this particular poem, he reflects on the sudden and unexpected death of a friend?s lover, and the state that his friend is left in afterward. Another entire poem is about a Holocaust gas chamber and its victims, entitled ?The Undressing Room.? Several more references to the Holocaust are found in other poems. Sometimes, Taylor abandons specifics and just looks at the idea of death as a generality, interspersing short fragments into poems and injecting them with a new meaning altogether.
Directly beside death, Taylor vividly describes scenes of everyday life. The most simple and mundane tasks suddenly become profound in his poetic language and complex turns of thought. In ?Next,? as he steps forward to buy a cup of coffee inside a bookstore, he reflects on the larger meaning of life and death, and relishes in a specific moment that is made his. Everything from everyday life is examined in a way that makes it not so everyday; a young man viewing a painting in a museum, people waiting for the train, two little girls running down the street: each is given a profundity it did not possess before.
Beyond this, Taylor also studies the idea of God, of religion, and a supreme deity. He does not talk of God as some remote, inaccessible idea, but rather approaches his study from a human understanding. He finds God in the bum on the street corner, he imagines Jesus as a teenager, face riddled with acne. He acknowledges God as the same being who created both Jesus and two little Mexican girls, who speaks to both the normal woman fraught with doubt and the rapist. He studies God as a constant in everything in life, in death, in the simple, the mundane, and the everyday.
Perhaps Body of the World is best approached as an examination of the human condition. It is a look at life in all its forms. This is not only supported by the continuous themes throughout the book, but also by the organization of the poems themselves. The poems are not organized by subject, but are rather just put there, as if by the order in which they occurred to the poet. They are a continuous stream of thought, a continuous stream of life as it is lived. This is reflected within the individual poems as well. It is even evident in the title Taylor chose for this collection, Body of the World. He seems to see the world as a collection of people and thoughts. People, their thoughts, and their experiences make up the ?body of the world? in a very corporeal and at the same time spiritual way.
One of my favorite poems in this collection is ?Arc,? possibly because of how it embodies the overall theme of the book. It is a comprehensive look at life, from birth to death. Each step of life is described with concrete realities, hinting at something deeper, something just beneath the surface. Throughout the poem, life seems to speed by, seen only as flashes of experience: ?sneaking in to read your father?s manuscript,? and ?a two piece suit between traffic signals.? This approach to life, one that embodies each individual experience as that of something bigger, is the attitude that Taylor reflects through the entire collection. Each poem is a unique individual, and yet yields to the larger flow, much as each person is part of the ?body of the world.?
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I found Mark Doty?s book, School of the Arts, to be the most satisfying read I have encountered thus far in class. His straightforward style makes his poetry easy to grasp, while his language and imagery still remain poetic. A strong sense of cohesion is present throughout the book, made evident through ongoing themes, the repetition of images, and similar titles. Images of birds in flight, colors, masks and skins, animals, and planes all appear numerous times. The theme of heaven in its many forms plays a prominent part in the book, as well as death, blackness, and some great unknown. References to art and literature are rampant, with multiple poems addressed to specific artists, and epitaphs present frequently. These add dimension to Doty?s poetry, giving it a flair it would not otherwise possess.
Not only is the overall collection good, but individual poems are exceptional as well. This trend shows itself early, starting with the first poem of the book, ?Heaven for Helen,? one of many ?Heaven for?? poems. These poems observe the ideal vision or idea of heaven for different people or animals. Three focus on humans (?Heaven for Helen,? ?Heaven for Stanley,? ?Heaven for Paul?), while two focus on the poet?s dogs (?Heaven for Beau,? ?Heaven for Arden?). They range widely in experience. ?Heaven for Helen? speaks of a physical union with the surrounding environment. In this union, all things are included, from
the respiration of the grass,
or ionized agitation
just above the break of a wave (lines 4-6)
to
shiny pink egg catons
and the thick treads of burst tires
along the highways in Pennsylvania (lines 18-20).
Meanwhile, ?Heaven for Beau? is about an individual joining with a community:
And he said---I could hear
his thinking, in the dream---
I want to go with them! (lines 45-47).
There are many more poems in School of the Arts worth noting. One of these is ?Late Flight.? It is an examination of the unknown, one of the major themes of the book. The poem focuses on the experiences of the passengers of a small plane taking off in the dark (another major theme). It is narrative, and yet introspective at the same time. Throughout the poem, there is an emphasis on what can not be seen or known: ?the dim marshland? (line 10), ?holes in black paper? (line 20), ?the huge, physical dark? (line 33). However, safety is eventually found in this unknown, as is the self. The poem concludes
?The self isn?t made of language;
the self is made of night.? (lines 40-41),
making the unknown knowable, while at the same time rendering the self unknown.
Another noteworthy poem is ?To Garcia Lorca.? Garcia Lorca was a Spanish poet and playwright. He was killed at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, at the young age of thirty-eight, by Nationalist partisans. Of further importance, and perhaps a reason Doty chose him as a muse, he was gay. The poem, however, does not even mention Lorca directly. It simply uses the idea of the Spanish revolutionary as a jumping-off point. It chooses instead to examine the image of sunflowers in a tub at a city flower market, in turn comparing them to the working Hispanic immigrants also present in the city. The poem starts with the radiant imagery of the sunflower: ?yellow exhalation; stiff stalk and copper blaze? (line 2) which is immediately contrasted with its container, ?a square rusting tub casually set / on the linoleum? (lines 5-6). In several stanzas, the poem turns subtly toward a more serious nature, still using ambiguous imagery. At first, one supposes
these foot soldiers of summer---flown
from a Mexican field, boxed north
from Alabama (lines 25-27)
to still be a description of the sunflowers, but it is soon evident that this language pertains to actual people, Hispanic immigrants, as the poem continues to describe them as
carrying our sacks
of coffee prepared
as we have requested it (lines 35-37).
A few stanzas later, the poem makes the comparison of flower and man concrete, moving beyond ambiguous images to declare
we are already flowers, already carry
shoulder to shoulder that diffident power,
stand even now stalk to stripped stalk
in the killing tub (lines 53-56).
Doty makes the comparison between man dying in his current surroundings and life to a cut flower?s finite longevity obvious in this cynic statement.
Doty?s latest book is surely something to be treasured. He has mastered what a true art form poetry can be in his narrative poems that still retain lyrical imagery and rhythm.
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(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
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Body of the World by Sam Taylor
dnh6u, December 4, 2006
Overall, I found Sam Taylor?s Body of the World an interesting read. It provides a unique look into the author?s mind that I feel could not have been harvested from any one individual poem. Each poem flows well, not only singularly, but in context of the other poems as well. Strong recurring themes help create this sense of flow and cohesiveness.One of these themes is the death of the poet?s mother. This plays prominently in a number of the poems, sometimes as a continuation of a larger idea, at other times, seemingly random in its presence: a sudden flash into Taylor?s mind at that exact moment. Taylor even devotes a lengthy passage to the subject in the second half of ?Original Sin,? juxtaposing her death to the beauty of an iris that sits near her deathbed, only to be recollected by the friend who left it after his mother?s death.
Death is also present as a general theme in Body of the World. Taylor explores it in many manifestations spread throughout the length of the book. At times, it is the death of his mother, as in the above mentioned poem; at other times, it is the death of a friend, as in the poem ?Accident.? In this particular poem, he reflects on the sudden and unexpected death of a friend?s lover, and the state that his friend is left in afterward. Another entire poem is about a Holocaust gas chamber and its victims, entitled ?The Undressing Room.? Several more references to the Holocaust are found in other poems. Sometimes, Taylor abandons specifics and just looks at the idea of death as a generality, interspersing short fragments into poems and injecting them with a new meaning altogether.
Directly beside death, Taylor vividly describes scenes of everyday life. The most simple and mundane tasks suddenly become profound in his poetic language and complex turns of thought. In ?Next,? as he steps forward to buy a cup of coffee inside a bookstore, he reflects on the larger meaning of life and death, and relishes in a specific moment that is made his. Everything from everyday life is examined in a way that makes it not so everyday; a young man viewing a painting in a museum, people waiting for the train, two little girls running down the street: each is given a profundity it did not possess before.
Beyond this, Taylor also studies the idea of God, of religion, and a supreme deity. He does not talk of God as some remote, inaccessible idea, but rather approaches his study from a human understanding. He finds God in the bum on the street corner, he imagines Jesus as a teenager, face riddled with acne. He acknowledges God as the same being who created both Jesus and two little Mexican girls, who speaks to both the normal woman fraught with doubt and the rapist. He studies God as a constant in everything in life, in death, in the simple, the mundane, and the everyday.
Perhaps Body of the World is best approached as an examination of the human condition. It is a look at life in all its forms. This is not only supported by the continuous themes throughout the book, but also by the organization of the poems themselves. The poems are not organized by subject, but are rather just put there, as if by the order in which they occurred to the poet. They are a continuous stream of thought, a continuous stream of life as it is lived. This is reflected within the individual poems as well. It is even evident in the title Taylor chose for this collection, Body of the World. He seems to see the world as a collection of people and thoughts. People, their thoughts, and their experiences make up the ?body of the world? in a very corporeal and at the same time spiritual way.
One of my favorite poems in this collection is ?Arc,? possibly because of how it embodies the overall theme of the book. It is a comprehensive look at life, from birth to death. Each step of life is described with concrete realities, hinting at something deeper, something just beneath the surface. Throughout the poem, life seems to speed by, seen only as flashes of experience: ?sneaking in to read your father?s manuscript,? and ?a two piece suit between traffic signals.? This approach to life, one that embodies each individual experience as that of something bigger, is the attitude that Taylor reflects through the entire collection. Each poem is a unique individual, and yet yields to the larger flow, much as each person is part of the ?body of the world.?
(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
School of the Arts: Poems by Mark Doty
dnh6u, December 4, 2006
I found Mark Doty?s book, School of the Arts, to be the most satisfying read I have encountered thus far in class. His straightforward style makes his poetry easy to grasp, while his language and imagery still remain poetic. A strong sense of cohesion is present throughout the book, made evident through ongoing themes, the repetition of images, and similar titles. Images of birds in flight, colors, masks and skins, animals, and planes all appear numerous times. The theme of heaven in its many forms plays a prominent part in the book, as well as death, blackness, and some great unknown. References to art and literature are rampant, with multiple poems addressed to specific artists, and epitaphs present frequently. These add dimension to Doty?s poetry, giving it a flair it would not otherwise possess.Not only is the overall collection good, but individual poems are exceptional as well. This trend shows itself early, starting with the first poem of the book, ?Heaven for Helen,? one of many ?Heaven for?? poems. These poems observe the ideal vision or idea of heaven for different people or animals. Three focus on humans (?Heaven for Helen,? ?Heaven for Stanley,? ?Heaven for Paul?), while two focus on the poet?s dogs (?Heaven for Beau,? ?Heaven for Arden?). They range widely in experience. ?Heaven for Helen? speaks of a physical union with the surrounding environment. In this union, all things are included, from
the respiration of the grass,
or ionized agitation
just above the break of a wave (lines 4-6)
to
shiny pink egg catons
and the thick treads of burst tires
along the highways in Pennsylvania (lines 18-20).
Meanwhile, ?Heaven for Beau? is about an individual joining with a community:
And he said---I could hear
his thinking, in the dream---
I want to go with them! (lines 45-47).
There are many more poems in School of the Arts worth noting. One of these is ?Late Flight.? It is an examination of the unknown, one of the major themes of the book. The poem focuses on the experiences of the passengers of a small plane taking off in the dark (another major theme). It is narrative, and yet introspective at the same time. Throughout the poem, there is an emphasis on what can not be seen or known: ?the dim marshland? (line 10), ?holes in black paper? (line 20), ?the huge, physical dark? (line 33). However, safety is eventually found in this unknown, as is the self. The poem concludes
?The self isn?t made of language;
the self is made of night.? (lines 40-41),
making the unknown knowable, while at the same time rendering the self unknown.
Another noteworthy poem is ?To Garcia Lorca.? Garcia Lorca was a Spanish poet and playwright. He was killed at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, at the young age of thirty-eight, by Nationalist partisans. Of further importance, and perhaps a reason Doty chose him as a muse, he was gay. The poem, however, does not even mention Lorca directly. It simply uses the idea of the Spanish revolutionary as a jumping-off point. It chooses instead to examine the image of sunflowers in a tub at a city flower market, in turn comparing them to the working Hispanic immigrants also present in the city. The poem starts with the radiant imagery of the sunflower: ?yellow exhalation; stiff stalk and copper blaze? (line 2) which is immediately contrasted with its container, ?a square rusting tub casually set / on the linoleum? (lines 5-6). In several stanzas, the poem turns subtly toward a more serious nature, still using ambiguous imagery. At first, one supposes
these foot soldiers of summer---flown
from a Mexican field, boxed north
from Alabama (lines 25-27)
to still be a description of the sunflowers, but it is soon evident that this language pertains to actual people, Hispanic immigrants, as the poem continues to describe them as
carrying our sacks
of coffee prepared
as we have requested it (lines 35-37).
A few stanzas later, the poem makes the comparison of flower and man concrete, moving beyond ambiguous images to declare
we are already flowers, already carry
shoulder to shoulder that diffident power,
stand even now stalk to stripped stalk
in the killing tub (lines 53-56).
Doty makes the comparison between man dying in his current surroundings and life to a cut flower?s finite longevity obvious in this cynic statement.
Doty?s latest book is surely something to be treasured. He has mastered what a true art form poetry can be in his narrative poems that still retain lyrical imagery and rhythm.
(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)