Mark Doty's Can Poetry Console A Grieving Public
In Mark Doty’s writings, varying views of a single topic can be found. As he analyzes topics through his poems or essays, he conveys many messages that are often opposites or seem to have no connection. Rather than one stance, he has multiple thoughts that are dispersed like a shotgun shell. Diverse opinions are found giving multiple positions to a single idea. Before dissecting Doty’s vague analysis, I first have to ask why he must he examine and analyze in the first place.
In Mark Doty’s essay, “Can Poetry Console a Grieving Public,” Doty discusses Wislawa Szymborska poem about the events of 9/11 that focuses on a picture of one of the jumpers from the burning towers. In the essay Doty points out that “just a few weeks after 9/11, calls …show more content…
While he understands the urge to write about powerful events like 9/11, he also says that some events are too powerful to be explained in words. “It is a gesture recognizable from Neruda’s great poem occasioned by the Spanish Civil War, “I Explain Some Things,” in which he writes that the blood of the children ran in the street “como el sangre de ninos”—“like the blood of children.” Doty gives this example to show how Pablo Neruda acknowledges the limitations of literature and that the blood of the children can only be described as the blood of the children. There is no equivalent metaphor to accurately represent such an image. Doty displays many thoughts in the 9/11 essay showing his dispersed writing style. On one hand, he talks about the idea of needing to write and how he understands this obligation to discuss things around us. On the other hand, he says some topics cannot be expressed properly in literature, giving the impression that he doesn’t want people to discuss it or to be careful if they were to. Surely words, no matter how great, cannot equate to the life of a human being, nor does any combination of words equate to children’s blood running. It is incomparable, but a comparison must be attempted. Despite his acknowledgement of literature’s inadequacy, Doty still chooses to write, which may mean that misrepresenting what is described is a risk
In Mark Doty’s essay, “Can Poetry Console a Grieving Public,” Doty discusses Wislawa Szymborska poem about the events of 9/11 that focuses on a picture of one of the jumpers from the burning towers. In the essay Doty points out that “just a few weeks after 9/11, calls …show more content…
While he understands the urge to write about powerful events like 9/11, he also says that some events are too powerful to be explained in words. “It is a gesture recognizable from Neruda’s great poem occasioned by the Spanish Civil War, “I Explain Some Things,” in which he writes that the blood of the children ran in the street “como el sangre de ninos”—“like the blood of children.” Doty gives this example to show how Pablo Neruda acknowledges the limitations of literature and that the blood of the children can only be described as the blood of the children. There is no equivalent metaphor to accurately represent such an image. Doty displays many thoughts in the 9/11 essay showing his dispersed writing style. On one hand, he talks about the idea of needing to write and how he understands this obligation to discuss things around us. On the other hand, he says some topics cannot be expressed properly in literature, giving the impression that he doesn’t want people to discuss it or to be careful if they were to. Surely words, no matter how great, cannot equate to the life of a human being, nor does any combination of words equate to children’s blood running. It is incomparable, but a comparison must be attempted. Despite his acknowledgement of literature’s inadequacy, Doty still chooses to write, which may mean that misrepresenting what is described is a risk