With School of the Arts , Mark Doty's darkly graceful seventh collection, the poet reinvents his own voice at midlife, finding his way through a troubled passage. At once witty and disconsolate -- formally inventive, acutely attentive, insistently alive -- this is a book of fierce vulnerability that explores the ways in which we are educated by the implacable powers of time and desire in a world that constantly renews itself. “Moving, splendidly observant, and unflinching, Mark Doty’s poems extend the range of the American lyric poem.” - American Academy of Arts and Letters “Achieve[s] a quiet grandeur with a voice marked by the clarity and thoughtful lyricism that distinguished his earlier collections.” - Ilya Kaminsky, Library Journal, starred review “Memorable, essential, big hearted, joyous in music ... this is the finest book of poems by one of our finest poets.” - Alan Shapiro “Vivid, inviting, descriptive verse.” - Publishers Weekly “Memorable, essential, big hearted, joyous in music and somber in theme, this is the finest book of poems by one of our finest poets.” - Alan Shapiro on School of the Arts “Doty is honest and stringent. . . . Wonderful . . . a book to be read slowly and closely.” - Daily Telegraph (London) With School of the Arts , Mark Doty's darkly graceful seventh collection, the poet reinvents his own voice at midlife, finding his way through a troubled passage. At once witty and disconsolate -- formally inventive, acutely attentive, insistently alive -- this is a book of fierce vulnerability that explores the ways in which we are educated by the implacable powers of time and desire in a world that constantly renews itself. Mark Doty's books of poetry and nonfiction prose have been honored with numerous distinctions, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and, in the United Kingdom, the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2008, he won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems . He is a professor at the University of Houston, and he lives in New York City. School of the Arts Poems By Mark Doty HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 Mark Doty All right reserved. ISBN: 0060752467 Heaven for Helen Helen says heaven, for her, would be complete immersion in physical process, without self-consciousness - to be the respiration of the grass, or ionized agitation just above the break of a wave, traffic in a sunflower's thousand golden rooms. Images of exchange, and of untrammeled nature. But if we're to become part of it all, won't our paradise also involve participation in being, say, diesel fuel, the impatience of trucks on August pavement, weird glow of service areas along the interstate at night? We'll be shiny pink egg cartons, and the thick treads of burst tires along the highways in Pennsylvania: a hell we've made to accompany the given: we will join our tiresome productions, things that want to be useless forever. But that's me talking. Helen would take the greatest pleasure in being a scrap of paper, if that's what there were to experience. Perhaps that's why she's a painter, finally: to practice disappearing into her scrupulous attention, an exacting rehearsal for the larger world of things it won't be easy to love. Helen I think will master it, though I may not. She has practiced a long time learning to see. I have devoted myself to affirmation, when I should have kept my eyes on the ground. Continues... Excerpted from School of the Arts by Mark Doty Copyright © 2006 by Mark Doty. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.