Mark Doty's last two award-winning collections of poetry, as well as his acclaimed memoir Heaven's Coast, used the devastation of AIDS as a lens through which to consider questions of loss, love and identity. The poems in Sweet Machine see the world from a new, hard-won perspective: A coming back to life, after so much death, a way of seeing the body's "sweet machine" not simply as a time bomb, but also as a vibrant, sensual, living thing.
These poems are themselves "sweet machines"—lyrical, exuberant and joyous—and they mark yet another milestone in the extraordinary career of one of our most distinguished and accomplished poets.
This award-winning collection finds radiance in the wreckage, exploring: