Sweet Machine

The three books that brought Mark Doty acclaim - the poetry collections MY ALEXANDRIA and ATLANTIS, and the prose memoir HEAVEN'S COAST - dealt unflinchingly with love and its loss. The poems in this new book are from a man transfigured and elevated by grief, and the tone throughout is one of celebration at the majesty, the impossible splendour of the living world. Whether the subject is golden retriev-ers or humpback whales, Delft tiles or Murano glass, lilacs on Third Avenue or turtles on Broadway, these are exquisite, transcendent hymns of praise- seneuous, brilliant and thrillingly alive.