Heaven's Coast: A Memoir | 
| Author: Mark Doty
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.80
You Save: $14.15 (95%)
New (33) Used (41) from $0.80
Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 283527
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0060928050
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.19697920092
EAN: 9780060928056
ASIN: 0060928050
Publication Date: March 12, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: some wear - marks
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Product Description
The year is 1989 and Mark Doty's life has reached a state of enviable equilibrium. His reputation as a poet of formidable talent is growing, he enjoys his work as a college professor and, perhaps most importantly, he is deeply in love with his partner of many years, Wally Roberts. The harmonious existence these two men share is shattered, however, when they learn that Wally has tested positive for the HIV virus. From diagnosis to the initial signs of deterioration to the heartbreaking hour when Wally is released from his body's ruined vessel, Heaven's Coastis an intimate chronicle of love, its hardships, and its innumerable gifts. We witness Doty's passage through the deepest phase of grief -- letting his lover go while keeping him firmly alive in memory and heart -- and, eventually beyond, to the slow reawakening of the possibilities of pleasure. Part memoir, part journal, part elegy for a life of rare communication and beauty, Heaven's Coast evinces the same stunning honesty, resplendent descriptive power and rapt attention to the physical landscape that has won Doty's poetry such attention and acclaim.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 Overcoming Loss August 6, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Heaven's Coast is a book about loss. Mark Doty approaches this topic through the loss of his beloved partner through AIDS, but, to me, this was not a book about AIDS. As some other reviews note, this topic has been covered by others probably more effectively.
First and foremost, Mark Doty is a poet. He views his life through images and metaphors. It is not surprising that he approaches personal loss in this same way? The power of the metaphor is that it is universal. It allows others to enter into the writer's thoughts without actually experience them. In this, Doty is masterful, and he uses this skill with Great power in Heaven's Coast. In doing so, he is able to describe loss - a feeling that is both deeply personal and yet universal. It may not be loss to AIDS - it may be loss of a relationship to addiction, loss of self-control to depression, loss of possessions to natural disasters. But it is all loss. Doty's writings help allow one's humanity to remain pinnacle during the time of loss. It may be submerged, but it is never loss. Looking for that essence of person-ality is what Doty emphasizes, and it is a message that transcends situation and becomes universal. Kudos to Doty for emphasizing this truth through his life story and captivating prose.
5 stars aren't nearly enough March 12, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Doty's memoir shimmers with love, with joy, with pain, with grief. His prose is as rich and lyrical as his poetry. He invites us into his soul as he describes in unsparing detail his lover's journey through HIV. Doty honors his partner with every word; the love and respect is obvious, as well as the despair that results from knowing what is to come and being totally powerless to prevent it.
This book is certainly a tangible gift from Mark to Wally, but the sheer beauty of the writing is a gift to the reader. I draw no sustenance from the ocean, yet I found myself longing to walk across the dunes of Cape Cod-Doty's use of language is that powerful.
Heaven's Coast should be required reading for all healthcare workers.
A reader is correct. It isn't about Aids. October 21, 2005
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Nor was it supposed to be a book about AIDS. Doty writes magnificently about the loss of a loved one, and the grief, in its many forms, that follows.
If you want a book about AIDS, don't buy this. If, however, you want a book that honestly portrays one man's experience with devastating loss and how he begins the process of coming through it to the other side, this is the book for you.
A Gorgeous Exploration of Grief...and moving on January 14, 2005
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
HEAVEN'S COAST is Mark Doty's his first prose book and a stirring and stunning memoir of his year of grief following the death of his lover of a dozen years Wally Roberts. With this book Doty has created a genuine masterpiece. It is a brilliant and accessible memoir conveying sorrow without cliche and making sense of death through the beauty of writing. Death is no longer simply tragic but attains a variety of meanings that result in new levels of acceptance and understanding. His powerful emotional exactitude is culled from a brilliant mastery of language and a precise usage of metaphor. The combination transforms human loss into a redemptive art form. HEAVEN'S COAST is one of the most moving, beautiful, and poignant books to emerge on AIDS and more importantly on loss and grief.
 this book is not about AIDS December 6, 2003
11 out of 28 found this review helpful
AIDS is a tragedy for the individual who experiences it, and for those who love them. But even if you have suffered at its hands, no-one should let you off the hook when you banalise it like this. 'Heaven's Coast' is over-written, self-important and embarrassing. I can only suppose that those who praise this writer's use of language come from the "more metaphors=more emotion" school of literature he favours, but like all self-indulgent writing, the effect of Doty's style is to cheat the genuine feeling behind it of a distinctive vocabulary, and to cheapen the suffering it depicts. There's something distasteful about watching someone using illness as an excuse to strike postures as hollow and self-regarding as this: 'Is this my work? To point at the world and say: look, see how darkly it sparkles?' From the precious rhetorical question to that faux-profound dark/light inversion, this is a typical instance of the book's extended masterclass in bad writing. If these were the outpourings of someone under the pressure of grief, they might be excusable, but Doty has worked hard to produce writing this overloaded: 'Wild, glimmering, watery horizons of sun, the watchful seals and shimmered flurries of snow seem to me to have more to do with the life of my spirit.' Even a teenager who'd just been taught about assonance and alliteration would balk at that sentence. This book, despite the horrors it sometimes documents, ends up reading like one long, shrill assertion of its own marvellous sensitivity, inviting the reader to congratulate themselves on their special ability to share in it. Sometimes bad writing is also morally questionable, and this is one of those times.
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