Happy Birthday Mark Doty…
One of the sections in today’s Writer’s Almanac brought a smile to my face with its humdrum reporting on the life of writer Mark Doty.
It’s the birthday of poet Mark Doty, born in Maryville, Tennessee (1953), who won the 2008 National Book Award for his collection Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. His other poetry collections include Bethlehem in Broad Daylight (1991), Sweet Machine (1998), School of the Arts (2005), and Theories and Apparitions (2008).
He’s the only American to ever win the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry, an award of ten thousand pounds sterling. He’s written several books of prose, including Atlantis (1995) about the death of his partner from AIDS, and — in the past decade — the memoirs Still Life with Oysters and Lemon (2001), Dog Years (2007), and The Art of Description (2010). He teaches at Rutgers University and is married to writer Paul Lisicky.
The emphasis of the last line is, of course, added, solely for the statement’s insignificance. It says, “Oh yeah, and he’s married to Paul.”
I remember reading a column in a gay magazine once in which the columnist stated his ultimate goal in the struggle. He said that when Billy’s mom and Joey’s mom can meet at the grocery store and talk lovingly about their sons budding romance, then all is well in the world. The way the writer’s of the Writer’s Almanac uneventfully added that tidbit of information to Mr. Doty’s entry reminds me of this goal.
When the rest of society can reach the point where Mark being married to Paul is not a big deal, then we will have achieved all that we set out to do.
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