In The Art of Description: World Into Word, a volume in Graywolf’s renowned Art of series edited by Charles Baxter, award-winning poet Mark Doty takes on the task of revealing the complexities of rendering the sensations of an experience. “It sounds like a simple thing, to say what you see,” writes Doty. “But try to find words for the shades of a mottled sassafras leaf, or the reflectivity of a bay on an August morning, or the very beginnings of desire stirring in the gaze of someone looking right into your eyes, and it immediately becomes clear that all we see is slippery, nuanced, elusive.” Through passionate, clear, and incisive meditations on the works of poets such as William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Elizabeth Bishop, Doty articulates what it is that makes the language of these masterful writers so precise and moving. Within this compact volume, readers and writers will enjoy and appreciate the deep consideration of the way words are used, both in poetry and in life.
