Firebird

October 4, 1999
Doty, an award-winning poet (Atlantis) and memoirist (Heaven's Coast) has penned an autobiography of his early years that, while beautifully and sensitively written, is more moving intellectually than emotionally. Using his family history and personal recollections to create a snapshot of the artist as a young child and beyond, Doty portrays the rocky emotional and psychological domestic terrain of his youth and adolescence: his family moved frequently; his mother was severely alcoholic; he hid his crushes on other boys from his homophobic parents while his sister became embroiled in a bad marriage and was imprisoned for breaking into and burglarizing a pharmacy. Doty's personal material is sometimes wrenching--at the story's climax, his mother, drunk, holds him at gunpoint--but he is at his best when describing his relationship to the idea of beauty and how it influenced his growth as an artist. From watching monster movies and listening to classical music as a child to participating in drama class and singing along to pop songs such as Petula Clark's "Downtown" as he grew older, Doty details his evolution as a poet. Through it all, he casts his tragic relationship with his mother as a touchstone for his love of art, relating how he moved from his childhood recognition that "my relationship with my mother is immense... and occupies so much space I can barely see around it" to an adult understanding that she "taught me the things that would save me, and then... she taught me I wasn't worth saving." In the end, Doty's story illuminates his poetry, but it doesn't match its power.

Starred review from October 1, 1999
Doty's much-honored poetry is animated by his abiding faith in beauty, and now, in this exquisitely composed boyhood memoir, he tells the story of how art saved his life. A smart and dreamy child, Doty was destined to live outside the parameters of an ordinary life. His parents moved with dizzying frequency, condemning him to repeatedly reenact the role of the new kid at school. But what really set him apart was his homosexuality. Aware that his behavior was not typically boylike, and that his feelings about his own sex were taboo, he puzzled things out on his own, and began to discern the transformative powers of literature, movies, and music. He read incessantly, empathized with the plight of monsters in horror films, and responded intuitively to the daring of Stravinsky and the sorrow of Judy Garland. Doty writes about these private rites of passage with arresting veracity, and his gentle unveiling of the heart of a gay child is an act of significant revelation. His luminous portrait of the artist as a young man also illuminates the currents of his times and contains a haunting family history. This is memoir at its best. ((Reviewed October 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)

October 1, 1999
A bright yet awkward and misunderstood child finds both solace and amusement in monster movies, wishing he were as powerful as the Amazing Colossal Man (but wondering "where did he find that immense loincloth which conceals his shame?"). Later, as an overweight, gay teenager, the same boy takes comfort in Petula Clark's "Downtown" and its promise of big-city excitement. An argument with his father over hair length leads to a trip to the barber shop and then a half-hearted suicide attempt, after which his parents do what the boy has wanted them to do all along, i.e., leave him alone. These and dozens of other crisply outlined, resonant images depict the early life of Doty, now one of the most successful poets of his generation, whose third volume of poems, My Alexandria, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award. Doty's theme--that which hurts the most also helps the most--is not new, though his luminous, bittersweet telling of it is. Evidently, the firebird of myth can indeed rise from its ashes, and here it soars magically.--David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.