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138th out of 221 books
—
63 voters
Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy
by
Mark Doty
Mark Doty's prose has been hailed as "tempered and tough, sorrowing and serene" (The New York Times Book Review) and "achingly beautiful" (The Boston Globe). In Still Life with Oysters and Lemon he offers a stunning exploration of our attachment to ordinary things-how we invest objects with human store, and why.
Paperback, 70 pages
Published
January 19th 2002
by Beacon Press
(first published 2001)
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As I read this book, it gradually evolved from an interesting to arresting work, from writing to poetry, to art. I've never really loved still life as much as I enjoy other types of visual arts. Through this piece I've learned a new respect for still life and now can look at them through new eyes. Through this, there are also new ways to look at life.
Mark Doty has a skill for clarifying meaning so well and for using language skillfully and beautifully. The poet shows even in the prose. I have to...more
Mark Doty has a skill for clarifying meaning so well and for using language skillfully and beautifully. The poet shows even in the prose. I have to...more
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Dec 08, 2007
Fostergrants
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
collectors of sentimental things, artists
When I started reading this book I got a few pages into it and stopped caring what it was about. It did not matter as long as I could keep a steady stream of his words pouring into my brain. I can imagine even his grocery lists are beautifully written and make your mouth water, satisfying your appetite without the need to go to the store. This is a small book and he does not waste space with unecessary speech. Each sentence has an impact and the result was that I read slowly and did not really t...more
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This book is notable for me for a couple of reasons, firstly, due to it being the first e-book I’ve read - such is my favoring of print, and secondly, because Mark Doty, so unexpectedly, swept me off my feet with his exquisite poetic prose. I don’t think I’ve read a book quite like this, remarkable in its ability to compress so much profundity into so small a place, and to have it flow with such elegance and grace. Every sentence seemed to demand of me a pause for reflection. This man positively...more
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This tasty bonbon of a book is, in essence, a love letter to a painting. Yet Mark Doty does more than exquisitely describe Osias Beert's artwork. He also draws conclusions about beauty and the objects we see (or ignore) in our daily lives.
I checked this book out of the library, and before I was even finished with it, I had ordered a copy online. That's how much I enjoyed it.
I checked this book out of the library, and before I was even finished with it, I had ordered a copy online. That's how much I enjoyed it.
This book is exquisite. This bit of prose is partly autobiographical - dealing with the loss of his long-time partner, learning how to negotiate between commitment and freedom; partly a rumination on the genre of still life and how we identify with material objects in our everyday lives (I have a new found appreciation for those old Dutch scenes and even the odds and ends in my own house). Doty is a poet, primarily, so the whole text is infused with beautiful language. Dawn got this for me for C...more
Last night I sat down with a glass of wine and Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, by the poet Mark Doty. I read it in one go and a second glass of wine. I really don’t have words to describe the experience of reading it. Any attempt to express it seems shallow after Doty’s beautifully crafted prose. I will only say that it has been a long time since I read a book that spoke so deeply to me, but this phrase also seems shallow and clichéd. Yet, speak to me it did.
This book defies genre, and my ap...more
This book defies genre, and my ap...more
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Review of Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty
Prior to reading Mark Doty’s Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, I had no appreciation for still life paintings. In fact, on my scale of desirable artwork, still life ranked a smidgen after portraits and a tad before those monotonous colored squares given profound titles like “Blue.” That being said, Doty’s short, prose-filled book made me a fan of still life. I even found myself envious at the end of the book when Doty takes a trip to the R...more
Prior to reading Mark Doty’s Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, I had no appreciation for still life paintings. In fact, on my scale of desirable artwork, still life ranked a smidgen after portraits and a tad before those monotonous colored squares given profound titles like “Blue.” That being said, Doty’s short, prose-filled book made me a fan of still life. I even found myself envious at the end of the book when Doty takes a trip to the R...more
"It is an art that points to the human by leaving the human out; nowhere visible, we're everywhere. It is an art that points to meaning through wordlessness, that points to timelessness through things permanently caught in time."
A moving, erudite meditation on the the way we relate intimately to objects. Doty's examination of Dutch still life paintings; his memories of objects and their intimate associations from childhood; his recollection of auction days, items purchased, and how positioning o...more
A moving, erudite meditation on the the way we relate intimately to objects. Doty's examination of Dutch still life paintings; his memories of objects and their intimate associations from childhood; his recollection of auction days, items purchased, and how positioning o...more
To reiterate what I posted in the thread to this particular book: Mary Doty so eloquently describes the picture that so captured him and it makes me yearn to observe more closely and respectfully the world, the people, the things that make up life around us. As in a painting ourselves, we can capture our views and visions within the single canvas of our own minds.
I didn't finish the book at this time. I would like to one day pick it up again but life, well, life goes on whether we want it to or...more
I didn't finish the book at this time. I would like to one day pick it up again but life, well, life goes on whether we want it to or...more
Such gorgeous prose. Paintings "full of secrets, full of unvoiced presences." In the space of a 70 page essay, we move from a Dutch still life, to the intimacy of grandmothers, houses, auctions, death and loss, sensual life, all of this connected to appreciation of the still life, and poetry and art. It is a book on aesthetics but grounded in physicality. A joy to read.
Here's a sample, " This is what history is: all those centuries of bodies, moving over these canals, twisting and blooming into...more
Here's a sample, " This is what history is: all those centuries of bodies, moving over these canals, twisting and blooming into...more
Well, the Amherst English department is batting 1.000 right now...
Doty's a bloody genius. Too bad more authors don't adapt this 70-ish-page essay / narrative / philosophy / criticism format. It works well, much better than forcing an idea into some preconceived notion (with a corresponding length) of a proper novel or poem or whatever.
Tons of great quotations in the book, but you can't beat the last three pages, especially:
"What we are is attention, a quick physical presence in the world, a brig...more
Doty's a bloody genius. Too bad more authors don't adapt this 70-ish-page essay / narrative / philosophy / criticism format. It works well, much better than forcing an idea into some preconceived notion (with a corresponding length) of a proper novel or poem or whatever.
Tons of great quotations in the book, but you can't beat the last three pages, especially:
"What we are is attention, a quick physical presence in the world, a brig...more
"Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life - this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife - and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they would not, would not be, poised on the edge these things inhabit when they are represented. These things exist - if indeed they are still around at all - in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiti...more
A wonderful, gentle, deeply moving little book. Perfect for a mid-December night with a glass of wine. Doty begins with a small painting on view at the Met, a 17th-c. Dutch still life in all its rich, deep colours and textures. And from there he moves to his own memories of childhood and loss and the small tangible items that we use to hold on to our memories. He quotes from a favourite poem of mine, one by C.P. Cavafy that sketches the half-empty room where the poet spent long sunlit afternoons...more
lovely essay to read + gain respeck for stilleven you always thought were super boring. poets writing prose i think is the best thing. kinda funny to read this because it was my gfs copy from like 9th grade and theres all these funny annotations, like the author i think was married, then not married, hten living with aids partner Wally, and she kept circling the name Wally with increasing number of questino marks, presumably because she missed the part about them being in relationship, and also...more
I read this gorgeous little book very slowly, because I wanted to savor all of it. It amazed me how seamlessly Mark Doty's writing moves from considering still lifes (not a type of art I was especially interested in until I read this book) to remembering fragments of his own history to pondering--deeply, surprisingly--enormous topics like art and death and the relationship between the two. He also considers the life of objects--what and how they mean, why we cherish them and what they can teach...more
"What memory does, what long habitation does, is art--or at least it does exactly what art does, which is to take the world within us and somehow make it ours, through description, through memory, through the act of saying the world, saying (or painting!) how we see" (64). And so writes Mark Doty in one of the most unusual and utterly poetic extended-essays I've ever read.
In fact, this small book is written in bursts of light similar to the structuring a perfect collection of poetry. Doty's rum...more
In fact, this small book is written in bursts of light similar to the structuring a perfect collection of poetry. Doty's rum...more
I’m a bit disappointed.
Doty writing style is poetry no doubt, but I expected the whole book to be about paintings and art. It’s too personal.
It appears to me that this book is Doty’s special way to express grief or deal with death.
I liked some of his reflections on still life paintings even though I differ with them.
“It is at the eyes of a portrait always, that our seeing stops. But in still life, there is no end to our looking.” I on the other hand, see endless world in the eyes of a portrait w...more
Doty writing style is poetry no doubt, but I expected the whole book to be about paintings and art. It’s too personal.
It appears to me that this book is Doty’s special way to express grief or deal with death.
I liked some of his reflections on still life paintings even though I differ with them.
“It is at the eyes of a portrait always, that our seeing stops. But in still life, there is no end to our looking.” I on the other hand, see endless world in the eyes of a portrait w...more
I got off to s slow start with this essay but warmed to Doty’s childhood remembrances of his grandmother and then found his writing easier to follow. Purchasing an old house, shopping flea markets and collecting… more interesting to most of my friends than having everything brand new. One friend has a cultural mind set to not have anything used by another human being. Not even a chair. I find this very odd. I enjoy layers of meaning and history. Ownership brings joy but also holds a double-edged...more
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It's technically not poetry, but I think you get that magical convergence that Doty has in his longer poems, that deep implicit connection. And to what purpose? The domestic space. Starting with his own joyful connection to a specific still life painting he has seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Doty goes on to celebrate all of the spaces people important to him have created, even when that celebration leads to a reconsideration of painful loss.
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An exquisite and almost devastating rumination on life, death, and the gestures that help us make sense of "memory's theater". I haven't read his poetry (yet) but this is exceptionally lucid prose, biographical or otherwise. Doty says that "when we describe the world we come closer to saying what we are" and then proceeds to tell us, with impressive richness and clarity, how he sees. Given his poet's eyes the journey is remarkable.
If you have ever wandered through an art museum and looked at still life paintings and thought "this is a load of bull..." then this book is for you. I will never look at a still life the same way. There are quotes in here from Cavafy, Lorca and many more. Mark Doty's phrasing and structure make me melt.
A lovely book of only 70 pages but definitely not what I had expected. "Everything in our field of vision is passing," Doty explains. Part memoir and part art analysis, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon forces us to consider that style has something to do with deth.
I was supposed to read this for a Humanities course in college, but never got around to it, even though I'd bought the text. I'd long felt guilty about it, and so I finally picked it up and read it over the course of a week about a year ago. It's a pretty quick read. It's funny though, because we studied the book in class, and I went back and read it less than a year ago, and I still can't really tell you what it's about. I know Doty is looking at a painting (the titular still life) and while he...more
One of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Doty manages to put into words something few have even tried: a description of beauty, and several valid reasons we find things beautiful. It was exactly what I needed during these dreary January days on the High Plains.
Read this for my continuing ed class...beautiful writing! It gave me a new perspective on still lifes, something I had never thought much about. It's a pretty short book, so I will probably read through it again before the class meets.
Thanksgiving weekend reading for INF 384C: Organizing Information. Professor Feinberg is cool like that.
Read it in a day. An unbelievably exquisite little book!
Read it in a day. An unbelievably exquisite little book!
Perhaps this type of writing is an acquired taste. It is not, at any rate, a taste I have ever acquired. It has very little to do with art or with painting or with the Dutch - it is subjective (and hence, quite arbitrary) and self-indulgent, and much of it taken up with rather uninteresting memories of his old aunts in Tennessee. It is about mood, and not insight. Just my opinion, of course.
woowee! this is a 70 page book that is as densely populated with metaphors, visualizations, descriptions, scenarios, and more enough to fill a 500 page book.
the basic concept i got from it is that we assign meaning, importance, even intimacy to certain objects that we encounter in our lives. The artistic medium that embodies the experience of encountering such objects is the still life. There is not a person who may have just spoken, as in a portrait, or a scene where someone or something may o...more
the basic concept i got from it is that we assign meaning, importance, even intimacy to certain objects that we encounter in our lives. The artistic medium that embodies the experience of encountering such objects is the still life. There is not a person who may have just spoken, as in a portrait, or a scene where someone or something may o...more
"i felt, truly, that there was one grandmother, whom god had made at the beginning of time, and that it was the strange lot of various women to become her...."
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Mark Doty is the author of six books of poems and two memoirs, Heaven's Coast and Firebird. A Guggenheim, Ingram-Merrill, and Whiting Fellow, he has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Nonfiction. He teaches at the University of Houston, and divides his time between Houston and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
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“Intimacy, says the phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, is the highest value. I resist this statement at first. What about artistic achievement, or moral courage, or heroism, or altruistic acts, or work in the cause of social change? What about wealth or accomplishment? And yet something about it rings true, finally—that what we want is to be brought into relationship, to be inside, within. Perhaps it’s true that nothing matters more to us than that.”
—
12 people liked it
“Because this painting has never been restored there is a heightened poignance to it somehow; it doesn’t have the feeling of unassailable permanence that paintings in museums do.
There is a small crack in the lower left, and a little of the priming between the wooden panel and the oil emulsions of paint has been bared. A bit of abrasion shows, at the rim of a bowl of berries, evidence of time’s power even over this—which, paradoxically, only seems to increase its poetry, its deep resonance. If you could see the notes of a cello, when the bow draws slowly and deeply across its strings, and those resonant reverberations which of all instruments’ are nearest to the sound of the human voice emerge—no, the wrong verb, they seem to come into being all at once, to surround us, suddenly, with presence—if that were made visible, that would be the poetry of Osias Beert.
But the still life resides in absolute silence.
Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something, or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read. Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a band of hikers will make themselves heard.
But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails, the solid and dependable apples, this heap of rumpled books, this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver.
These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur. The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen. Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over, like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does, as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so, and things fall into being, tumble through the progression of existing in time.
Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life—this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife—and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they are not, would not be, poised on the edge these same things inhabit when they are represented.
These things exist—if indeed they are still around at all—in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiting to be spoken. Single word that has been forming all these years in the light on the knife’s pearl handle, in the drops of moisture on nearly translucent grapes: At the end of time, will that word be said?”
—
2 people liked it
More quotes…
There is a small crack in the lower left, and a little of the priming between the wooden panel and the oil emulsions of paint has been bared. A bit of abrasion shows, at the rim of a bowl of berries, evidence of time’s power even over this—which, paradoxically, only seems to increase its poetry, its deep resonance. If you could see the notes of a cello, when the bow draws slowly and deeply across its strings, and those resonant reverberations which of all instruments’ are nearest to the sound of the human voice emerge—no, the wrong verb, they seem to come into being all at once, to surround us, suddenly, with presence—if that were made visible, that would be the poetry of Osias Beert.
But the still life resides in absolute silence.
Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something, or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read. Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a band of hikers will make themselves heard.
But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails, the solid and dependable apples, this heap of rumpled books, this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver.
These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur. The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen. Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over, like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does, as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so, and things fall into being, tumble through the progression of existing in time.
Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life—this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife—and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they are not, would not be, poised on the edge these same things inhabit when they are represented.
These things exist—if indeed they are still around at all—in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiting to be spoken. Single word that has been forming all these years in the light on the knife’s pearl handle, in the drops of moisture on nearly translucent grapes: At the end of time, will that word be said?”
