Emergence Like a Dream

Firebird 

by Mark Doty

"And that is close enough to forgiveness, to find that any character in the dream of your life might be you.  But you don't know that until you tell the story; caught in the narrative yourself, how could you see from that height?


Though the firebird can; that's the business of birds, to see from the correcting perspective of above. All along, the firebird watches, patient in ashes, smoldering till the hour to flame.  Just one dance teaches it to believe in the brightness to come.  All it ever needed was a practice run, in preparation for someday's full emblazoning." (p 194)





How well do we know others? Our family, our friends, ourselves? How do we perceive each of these? Through a glass, darkly, or through a perspective box, in a way like an artist. From the opening page of Mark Doty's poetic memoir, Firebird, the theme of art is present.
First it appears in a description of the famous "perspective box" of the Seventeenth-century Dutch painter Samuel Van Hoogstraten. Then as the narrative continues the artistic view and way of life is a theme that provides a way to understand the many colors of Mark's life from his early years to his middle age. He says that "I believe that art saved my life." Whether this happened in his fourth-grade art class or when his poetry first received professional recognition from the surrealist poet who gives of himself to a shy young teenage poet; his introduction to the world of poetry and to an artistic family that, like Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera provides a haunting image of what a family could be but his is not.

It is his family that provides much of the drama of this portrait of a young artist.  This includes a passive/aggressive father who cannot hold on to a job and insists on denuding a teenage Mark's head of its long hair and his mother whose addictive personality leads to storms of emotion so harsh and frequent that Mark "can feel when the storms are brewing" and makes himself scarce.  He copes by exploring various methods of easing his tension from hashish to transcendental meditation. With these and his art he survives the turbulence of such a volatile family life.

I was moved by his gradual recognition and acceptance of his sexuality and the blooming of the artist that would eventually win prizes for his poetry. He withstood the fire of the pressures from his family and grew into a successful artist and firebird who watches his own life emerge like a dream from the elements that made it his own.