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by: Mark Doty
List Price: $13.00Amazon.com's Price: $11.05 You Save: $1.95 (15%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780060931971
ISBN: 0060931973
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 228
Publication Date: October 01, 2000
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: September 19, 2000
Sales Rank: 432435
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In Firebird, Mark Doty tells the story of a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's 'Get Happy' by his alarmed mother at the bedroom door, exclaiming, 'Son, you're a boy!'
Firebird presents us with a heroic little boy who has quite enough worries without discovering that his dawning sexuality is the Wrong One. A self-confessed 'chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent,' Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America-from Tennessee to Arizona, Florida to California. A lyrical, heartbreaking comedy of one family's dissolution through the corrosive powers of alcohol, sorrow, and thwarted desire, Firebird is also a wry evocation of childhood's pleasures and terrors, a comic tour of American suburban life, and a testament to the transformative power of art.
Amazon.com Review:
'Childhood's work is to see what lies beneath,' Mark Doty writes in his memoir, Firebird. And adulthood's work, he suggests, is to make sense of what the child-self once saw. Doty, a poet, does this remarkably well, capturing the peculiar talismans of youth--'little cars of fragrant plastic whose wheels turn on wire axles that can be popped loose and examined; hard candies; sweet, chalky wafers strung together into wristlets and necklaces'--as well as a child's experience of sin: I am standing paralyzed by what I've done, there's a rush and roar from the direction of the living room, my father rising from the couch, he's coming down the hall, I'm afraid he's going to spank me, I remember the last time, the humiliation of it, him pulling my pants down on the porch and whaling me, his red face filled up with blood and rage, striking at me because what have I done? Now I've done something plain and sharply lit like the big shards of glass on the floor... It's clear from the start that the author's home life was not happy. His father's job with the Army Corps of Engineers kept the family crisscrossing the country; his older sister got pregnant at 17--'these girls knew what they were doing, these girls married to get out'--and ended up, eventually, in prison; and his mother, a frustrated artist, sank eventually into depression and alcoholism. As if growing up in this family during the 1950s and '60s weren't difficult enough, Doty's homosexuality provided additional anguish. A confrontation over his long hair led to a humiliating scene at a barbershop where Doty's father had dragged him and ended up with his attempted suicide at the age of 14. There are plenty more heart-wrenching episodes like this, and at times you might wonder why you'd want to put yourself through the ordeal of reading about them. Doty himself seems aware of this. 'Why tell a story like this, who wants to read it?' he demands near the end of the book, then responds, 'Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.' That may be one reason for reading Firebird; the other, undoubtedly, is Mark Doty's precise and lyrical prose, his acute perception, and his compassionate heart. --Alix Wilber
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Rising from the ashes
Firebird is another tour de force by Mark Doty. The power in this book comes from two sources - the writing and the story. Mark Doty is first and foremost a poet. He uses language to paint pictures, using metaphors that speak to the imagination and causes the reader to consider the power of language. Metaphors cause us to go deeper into the story and make it our own. Mark Doty is a master of language. He can make even the ugliest realities beautiful and personal.
The story in Firebird ... Read More
Rating:  - A Mysterious, Beautiful Memoir
I read (and met) Mark Doty while I was in college. On the grass at Sarah Lawrence, I memorized his sad, beautiful poetry and read and re-read his book, Heaven's Coast, chronicling his life with his partner dying from AIDS. So, I was very excited when Firebird was chosen by my book club. Again, I found myself amazed and delighted by Mark Doty's use of imagery, but I was also disappointed as the book leapt from experience to experience without explanation. Maybe this is why I never felt "inside" his character, ... Read More
Rating: - Evolution of a poet
It's not always a pretty story, but it's always intellectually and emotionally moving. Mark Doty is one of America's finest writers of poetry and prose. That such a mind should have triumphed over his stressful growing up years is remarkable. His background would have landed many other kids in a foster home. Firebird is a coming-of-age memoir of a pre-gay geeky kid with a deranged and alcoholic mother, a passive/conflicted father, and a sister whose middle name is Trouble.
Firebird is beautifully written, ... Read More
Rating: - Unfathomable memoir for ssuch a Poet of beauty
Mark Doty is one of the finest poets of our time, writing eloquent, informed poems, essays, books, and musings about life and art. To read FIREBIRD: A MEMOIR almost breaches credibility, so stressful and trying was his childhood and youth. But perhaps, and probably, this is why he is able to write with such sensitivity today. FIREBIRD relates the coming of age of a chubby, nerdy, alienated, pre-gay, geeky kid who finds little solace in his family (a deeply disturbed alcoholic mother, a passive ne'er-do-well ... Read More
Rating: - This Book Is a Must Read
FIREBIRD is one of those books that draws in the reader and holds his/her attention. The reader is at once morbidly fascinated and horrified by the author's life experiences. The author writes about his life without self-pity or a plea for sympathy. That he had the strength to survive all he has endured in the first half of his life is inpsirational. I am proud to have known Mark Doty for two brief school years in the late sixties. Thirty-five years later Mark Doty continues to impact my life.
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