Atlantis

Atlantis, according to ancient legend, was a magnificent civilisation that disappeared beneath the waves, leaving behind centuries of speculation, elaborate theories and a thriving industry in books explaining precisely where it must have been. Mark Doty, however, is interested in something rather more personal: the things we love, the worlds we construct around them, and the distressing tendency of everything precious to prove considerably less permanent than we had hoped.

Atlantis (1996), by Mark Doty and published by Jonathan Cape, is an extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving collection of poetry exploring love, grief, memory, mortality and the complicated business of continuing to live when the world has altered beyond recognition.

Written in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic and the illness and death of Doty’s partner, Wally Roberts, the collection confronts devastating personal loss while remaining fiercely attentive to the beauty of the physical world. Here is a poet who understands that grief does not politely suspend the activities of nature. Flowers continue blooming, tides advance and retreat, sunlight falls upon ordinary objects, and the universe carries on with a rather breathtaking lack of consideration for individual human suffering.

Doty’s response is not to turn away from the world but to examine it more closely. His poems are filled with water, animals, landscapes, light and colour, transforming seemingly ordinary observations into profound reflections upon love and impermanence.

The sea becomes a particularly powerful presence, both beautiful and indifferent, capable of suggesting renewal, disappearance, mystery and the vast unknowable territories beyond human understanding. Like the legendary Atlantis, the worlds we inhabit can vanish, leaving us with fragments, memories and the difficult task of reconstructing meaning from what remains.

Yet Doty’s poetry is far from relentlessly sombre. His extraordinary attention to detail, sensual richness and occasional flashes of humour prevent these poems from becoming monuments to despair. Even in grief, he discovers moments of astonishment and unexpected beauty, as though the world, having behaved appallingly, is nevertheless determined to remain visually magnificent.

His language is elegant, musical and wonderfully precise, combining emotional honesty with an almost painterly appreciation of the natural world. There are poems here that reward lingering, rereading and the occasional abandonment of whatever important task one had originally intended to accomplish.

Published in 1996, Atlantis stands among Doty’s most celebrated collections, admired for its powerful exploration of personal loss and its remarkable ability to find meaning amid uncertainty.

Condition: As New. This Jonathan Cape edition is in exceptionally well-preserved condition, showing little or no apparent evidence of previous reading or handling. A rather appropriate irony for a book concerned with the impermanence of everything, since this particular copy seems to have resisted the passage of time with admirable determination.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where we cannot promise to locate the lost city of Atlantis, restore vanished civilisations or resolve the fundamental mysteries of existence. We can, however, offer a beautifully preserved book by a poet who has given these matters considerably more thought than most of us.

A luminous, heartbreaking and unforgettable collection that reminds us how much can disappear beneath the surface, and how much beauty remains above it.

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