The poems of My Alexandria transform homophobic narratives about the disease, offer comfort to those living with HIV, and encourage empathy from those whose lives have not yet been affected by the virus.... Although Doty’s poems are not polemical, they counter reductive representations of people with AIDS, are accessible to a wider audience, and have the potential to improve public response to the epidemic....

With his rhapsodic inclusiveness, Doty performs a kind of meditation through which the wounds of memory are healed. In many of his poems, the meditation blooms from the spirit of his narrative, appearing often in what seems like an extended addenda—or cadenza—to the poem. The tone of these meditations is thoughtful, almost essay-like, enfolding the poem in a membrane of sensuous exposition. In a lesser poet, this exposition might intrude on the poem, might seem like an apology for what the more dramatic parts of the poem fail to offer.

It was Mark Doty’s third volume of poems, My Alexandria (1993), that gained him widespread acclaim and critical recognition. His first two volumes, Turtle, Swan (1987) and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight (1991), have recently been brought back into print by University of Illinois Press in a single volume. This earlier work allows us to see Doty establishing his characteristic themes—beauty, mutability, aesthetic invention—and exploring his admiration for other poets and artists, such as turn-of-the-century Alexandrian homosexual poet C. P.

In recent years I've been lucky enough to travel to Britain a number of times for literary events. My conversations with poets and readers there have led me to think more about what it means to be an American writer—something that we don't consider so carefully, I suppose, until we're confronted with difference.

Professor Bloom reminds us of the origins of the term aesthetic in "perceptiveness"; what we make of his argument depends on just what we think "perceptiveness" means. Bloom wants to place the aesthetic in a kind of pure realm, free of social or historical pressures--in paradise, as it were, where perennial, indelible values rule: harmony, order, the subtle, infinitely pleasing, endlessly varied shadings of meaning made by the artful arrangement of words.

In the Stop 'n Shop in Orleans, Massachusetts, I was struck by the elegance of the mackerel in the fresh-fish display. They were rowed and stacked, brilliant against the white of the crushed ice; I loved how black and glistening the bands of dark scales were, and the prismed sheen of the patches between, and their shining flat eyes. I stood and looked at them for a while, just paying attention while I leaned on my cart--before I remembered where I was and realized that I was standing in someone's way.

Mark Wunderlich: In an article you published in the Hungry Mind Review about your experience as a judge for the Lenore Marshall Prize, you discussed your hopes for the future of American Poetry. I'm wondering if you could talk a little more about that. Also, and this may be impossible to answer, but I'm curious to know what vision you have for the future of your own work? What are your current ambitions?

Bolick: In the book [Firebird] you write about your "education in beauty," beginning with your sister's tantalizing drawer of shiny trinkets: crepe and tulle, glittery ribbons, "scraps of sheer and sparkled treasure." Could you talk about what beauty meant to you as a child  How has your relationship to beauty and artifice changed over time?

It was two years ago that I first read a book by a remarkable young American poet called Mark Doty. He was completely unknown in this country. His poems had a compassionate, lyrical urgency, a descriptive and metaphorical power that was more exciting than anything I'd read from America since the death of Robert Lowell in the 1970s.

Prologue: Is There a Future? April 1993