Still Life with Oysters and Lemon

An account of the poet author's love affair with Dutch art, and the consolations and ecstasies of the objects we gather on our way through life. We begin standing in the Met in front of a painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. Looking almost more closely than we can bear at this image from the 17th century, Doty attempts to tell us everything it holds, from pigments to forms, and above all, meaning. This confrontation with beauty is one of many that shapes his life, from the pinwheel peppermints that emerge from his grandma's purse in his Tennessee childhood to the cracked china platter that graces the mantelpiece in the home he shares with his dying husband. But it is Dutch still-life painting that seems to have the most to tell him. This book is his record of years spent looking closely at bunched asparagus, translucent wine glasses, curling lemon peel and the bloom on grapes. In a brief, lucid, powerfully concentrated narrative, which tells the story of a life of self-discovery and an avid gaze, Mark Doty writes with poetic specificity and painterly clarity. In his loving description of reality, we begin to see that simply looking can be the most tender reverence.