{"id":1154,"date":"2008-02-29T00:17:15","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T06:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2008-02-29T00:17:58","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T06:17:58","slug":"poetry-friday-mark-dotys-pipistrelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1154","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Mark Doty’s “Pipistrelle”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pipistrelle batI mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’d seen Mark Doty<\/strong><\/a> at a reading at Cornell. I had only very recently been introduced to Mark Doty’s poetry, by the same friend that invited me to the reading and snuck me into the secret reception afterwards. I can never thank her enough.<\/p>\n

If it weren’t for her, I might never have encountered Doty’s spare, tightly-wound verse, and the elegance with which he portrays the natural world. <\/p>\n

If it weren’t for her, I might not have had the profound pleasure of hearing said verse read by the author himself, who is blessed with the perfect voice for poetry: edgy, rich, intense, and with a welcome hint of self-mockery.<\/p>\n

If it weren’t for her, I almost certainly wouldn’t have had the chance to talk to Mark Doty in person, and find out that he was born in Maryville, Tennessee<\/strong><\/a>: the very same tiny town where my husband grew up, where he and Jules and I attended college, and where for a fun post-college year or two Jules and I shared a tiny old four-room farm house with an excellent porch swing and a wicked ant problem.<\/p>\n

So thanks, Dana. And now I pay it forward, and share him with the rest of you. Here’s a snippet of Mark Doty’s poem “Pipistrelle:”<\/p>\n

Then Charles saw the quick ambassador
\nfret the spaces between boughs
\nwith an inky signature too fast to trace.<\/p>\n

We turned our faces upwards,
\ntrying to read the deepening blue
\nbetween black limbs. And he said again,<\/p>\n

There he is! Though it seemed only
\none of us could see the fluttering pipistrelle
\nat a time\u2014you\u2019d turn your head to where<\/p>\n

he\u2019d been, no luck, he\u2019d already joined
\na larger dark. There he is! Paul said it,
\nthen Pippa. Then I caught the fleeting contraption<\/p>\n

speeding into a bank of leaves,
\nand heard the high, two-syllabled piping.
\nBut when I said what I\u2019d heard,<\/p>\n

no one else had noticed it, and Charles said,
\nOnly some people can hear their frequencies.
\nFifty years old and I didn\u2019t know <\/p>\n

I could hear the tender cry of a bat
\n\u2014cry won\u2019t do: a diminutive chime
\nsomewhere between merriment and weeping…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read the entire poem here<\/strong><\/a>, and you can listen to Mark Doty reading it here<\/strong><\/a>. And to read about the soprano Pipistrelle bat, and hear it’s echolocation call, go here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

another Pipistrelle bat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’d seen Mark Doty at a reading at Cornell. I had only very recently been introduced to Mark Doty’s poetry, by the same friend that invited me to the reading and snuck me into the secret reception afterwards. I can never thank her enough. If it weren’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}