Mark Doty (Fire to Fire) has been delighting readers for many years with his poetry and memoirs. Deep Lane's 35 poems continue to explore subjects Doty cares a great deal about: the natural world, animals, his personal relationships and the divine.
Nine poems scattered throughout the book are called "Deep Lane," the road Doty lives near in Amagansett, N.Y. They carefully and lovingly dive into this place. His home and the world he lives in--"Eden" with its "shingled cottage"--provide the inspiration for the poems. Here are ticks ("heat-seeking, tiny, multitudinous"), a pond with its white fish soon to be swallowed by a bird ("bill raised to the air, the throat unrelenting"), his dog Ned ("You run, darling, you tear up that hill"), maples and walnuts, radishes, the wind ("you can't stay anywhere to love"). The last poem in the sequence, set in November, is about his partner coming home late at night: "with a generous,/ unflinching scrutiny, undeceived, loving, as clear a gaze/ as anyone had ever brought to you."
One of the longer poems is the impressive "The King of Fire Island," about a buck that lives there, the "very model of his kind." The deer is missing one hoof and would accept carrots from Doty and his friends, safe, "no cars, no hunting." In late winter, Doty hears a rumor about a deer's head floating in the bay: "I saw my own severed head/ slip to the floor, a glazed, paltry thing."
These are gentle, reflective, affecting and observant poems about Doty's past and about the present world around him. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher