Moment of Exhilaration in Soul's on Ice
Moment of Exhilaration
As Mark Doty passes the fresh-fish display in the grocery store, he specifically notices the organized layout of the Mackerel. This everyday experience gets Mark Doty thinking and reflecting. Eventually, he creates a deeply insightful poem out of this simple experience, a poem he calls “Souls on Ice”. As Doty begins the poem with a simple description, the metaphors guide and lead him throughout the end. Once a simple idea fell into his hands, Doty felt a moment of exhilaration. When Doty starts the poem’s investigative process, “a terrific kind of exhilaration me (Doty)” takes place. The sentences in the poem, “distinguished from the other –nothing about them of individuality”, made the movement of his writing clear. Beginning with This moment of exhilaration is the catalyst that quickly led him to write two sentences: “one that considers the fish as replications of the ideal, Platonic Mackerel, and one that likewise imagines them as the intricate creations of an obsessively repetitive jeweler”. The pace picked up at this point, and after the idea had grown, Doty could let the poem write for itself. It seems as if the ideas in the poem fell onto paper before Doty even thought about them. Surprisingly, his writing presented ideas that amazed him too. Mark Doty seems to have heightened his speed during the moment of exhilaration. Before when writing the beginning of the poem, Doty took more time to try to find his direction in the poem. He starts off the two stanzas slowly with an “exploratory description”. However, during his peak of excitement, he seems to have been lost in the great amount of thought and idea that had hit him. During his process of writing he made many mistakes but he had totally forget about them “because the poem has worked the charm of its craft on my (Doty’s) memory; it convinces me (Doty) that it is an artifact of a process of inquiry.” With these words, Doty has created the notion that the he wasn’t writing
As Mark Doty passes the fresh-fish display in the grocery store, he specifically notices the organized layout of the Mackerel. This everyday experience gets Mark Doty thinking and reflecting. Eventually, he creates a deeply insightful poem out of this simple experience, a poem he calls “Souls on Ice”. As Doty begins the poem with a simple description, the metaphors guide and lead him throughout the end. Once a simple idea fell into his hands, Doty felt a moment of exhilaration. When Doty starts the poem’s investigative process, “a terrific kind of exhilaration me (Doty)” takes place. The sentences in the poem, “distinguished from the other –nothing about them of individuality”, made the movement of his writing clear. Beginning with This moment of exhilaration is the catalyst that quickly led him to write two sentences: “one that considers the fish as replications of the ideal, Platonic Mackerel, and one that likewise imagines them as the intricate creations of an obsessively repetitive jeweler”. The pace picked up at this point, and after the idea had grown, Doty could let the poem write for itself. It seems as if the ideas in the poem fell onto paper before Doty even thought about them. Surprisingly, his writing presented ideas that amazed him too. Mark Doty seems to have heightened his speed during the moment of exhilaration. Before when writing the beginning of the poem, Doty took more time to try to find his direction in the poem. He starts off the two stanzas slowly with an “exploratory description”. However, during his peak of excitement, he seems to have been lost in the great amount of thought and idea that had hit him. During his process of writing he made many mistakes but he had totally forget about them “because the poem has worked the charm of its craft on my (Doty’s) memory; it convinces me (Doty) that it is an artifact of a process of inquiry.” With these words, Doty has created the notion that the he wasn’t writing
Cited: DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy. "Souls on Ice by Mark Doty." Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle, 2008. Print.