Word Works | Mark Doty: Raising the Stakes
A good poem makes feeling and thinking scrutable, and makes use of any number of tools (think sonics, image, tone, diction, figurative speech, lineation, white space) to help the writer go more deeply into the material of the poem and engage the reader’s imaginative participation as fully as possible. In this talk, Mark Doty read and discuss a small group of poems that engage with their subjects artfully, and offer a portrait of the perceiver as well as what’s perceived. We’ll try to identify just how this work becomes urgent, heartbreaking, and beautiful, enlarging what we know of the world. What makes them feel complete? Where does the magic reside? Doty will be joined in conversation by Joshua Wilkinson.
Word Works craft talks by novelists, essayists, poets, and memoirists focus on writing as process rather than finished product, examining how language works to inspire and provoke new ideas through live close readings of the writer’s own or others’ work. These talks are designed to apply to writers of all genres as well as illuminate well-known works for avid readers. The talks are followed by an interview with a noted editor, writer, or critic.
See the full 2022-23 Word Works series lineup here »
Interested in attending the entire series? Purchase a series pass to see all six events for the price of five »
Mark Doty
Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane (April 2015), Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2008 National Book Award, and My Alexandria, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize in the UK. He is also the author of four memoirs: the New York Times-bestselling What Is the Grass, Dog Years, Firebird, and Heaven’s Coast, as well as a book about craft and criticism, The Art of Description: World Into Word. Doty has received two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize.
Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author or editor of thirteen books. Born and raised in Seattle, he's on the English faculty at Seattle University.
