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Book Review: Heaven’s Coast by Mark Doty

After having my little snark socks blown off by his Fire to Fire (my pick for Best Book of ‘08), I vowed to read anything and everything by Mark Doty. His poems are incandescent, probing, challenging lyrical memoirs in verse-form; his words affect me like very few writers ever have, cracking my world open and letting the light in, no matter how warm or welcome, scorching or painful. In short, I treasure the work of Mr. Doty.

It comes as no surprise that Mark Doty is just as adept at prose as he is at poetry. 2007’s Dog Years is a loving paean to his beloved dogs, and how their love and devotion carried him through some of the darkest hours of his life. It is precisely those dark hours that are examined minutely in an earlier work of memoir, 1997’s Heaven’s Coast, which is, I think, one of the finest, bravest books ever written on the subject of grief.

In 1989, Doty’s longtime partner Wally tested HIV positive, while Doty himself tested negative, but “it didn’t matter which of us it was,” he writes. “…His news was mine.” Like all solid unions, the boundaries between the two individuals had, to a point, blurred; they were both affected by this diagnosis and they would see one another through.

“Through”, not incidentally, is the name of the book’s second part. The first part, “Coastal Studies”, explores the immediate impact of Wally’s death (of an AIDS-related viral brain infection in 1994), as well as another crushing blow to the author: the death of his best friend, the poet Lynda Hull, in a car accident. In “Coastal Studies”, Doty dives — is pushed, more accurately — into a sea of grief and sorrow, and, using language and metaphor as only a truly great poet can, he finds meaning and message in nearly everything around him. Heaven’s Coast, as well as being a story of loss, is also a breathtaking homage to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and it is in Provincetown’s rich coastal beauty, its stunning contradictions and embracing nature, that Doty finds the courage to live, to write, and to be transformed. “A coast is not a line really but a borderland, site of a continual conversation between elements which transforms both,” he writes.

It is in the book’s second section, “Through”, that we go back in time to the diagnosis and through the ensuing years leading up to “Coastal Studies”. Doty revisits the terrain of his lover’s decline, friends’ support, doctors’ ineptitude (anything medical professionals could not explain, which was a lot in the early 90s, they wrote off as “viral activity”), and the passionate history shared between two people in love. Doty is able, at least in retrospect, to glean magnificent wisdom from Wally’s slow exit from this world, as well as Lynda’s abrupt one, and this wisdom, these lessons and insights, are — contrary to what one might think — anything but depressing. They are, in a word, an inspiration.

Heaven’s Coast is a love letter to a departed partner, to a deceased friend, to a beloved seaside town, and, perhaps above all else, to the healing, transformative power of language.  Grade: A+

 

Title  Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir

Author  Mark Doty

Publisher  HarperCollins

Year Published  1997

ISBN  0060928050

Snarkbytes  Mark Doty reads “Charlie Howard’s Descent”, which appears in Fire to Fire, as well as 1987’s Turtle, Swan.

 

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WHAT IS A SNARK?






The Snark is a creature created by Lewis Carroll in his poem "The Hunting of the Snark". To give a proper description of Snarks, one must look no further than Carroll himself, who summed them up in one word: Unimaginable.

But this much we do know: some have feathers, some have whiskers. Snarks sleep a lot, yet they are an ambitious lot -- with very little sense of humor. They love bathing-machines and tend to bring them wherever they go; they are also handy for striking a light. Snarks live on a far-off island, a place filled with chasms and crags, and are constantly on the lookout for Snark-hunters. Their mortal enemies are hope, care, thimbles and forks.

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