![]() Wayward mammals, urban saplings, beaches, forests, and yards (as in the eight poems all titled “Deep Lane”) stand for the omnipresence of mortality, and the persistence of wild desire: a “Little Mammoth,” “milk-tusks not even/ sprouted,” drowns in a prehistoric clay pit “the striped snake in the garden loves me/ so fiercely she never comes near.” The people in the poems-a needle-drug addict, a survivor of a suicide attempt-make frightening choices, though such choices seem natural to them. He also does some of his best work yet as a nature poet. Having gained renown for his self-consciously beautiful, heart-on-sleeve elegies about the devastations of HIV/AIDS, Doty remains elegiac and continues to attend to beauty. Doty ( Sweet Machine), whose Fire to Fire won the 2008 National Book Award, will sate his many admirers with this eighth collection. ![]()
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