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.

A thoughtful account of a partner’s descent into illness, full of exquisite descriptions of Cape Cod and moving reflections on grief, loss, and love. The work’s a great deal less political than many AIDS memoirs, but its portrait of a death in slow motion still serves as a powerful indictment of a callous society.

the perfect balance of beauty and rawness, with neither one at all diminished by the presence of the other as might have happened in the hands of a lesser writer - i really love mark doty’s writing, his way of seeing the world and everything in it with such a measured, luminous grace. this was always going to be a desperately sad read given that it’s a memoir written during the gradual decline and death of doty’s partner wally from AIDS but there’s something so clarifying and hopeful about it to...

The most attentive, enduring exploration of grief that I have ever read, bar none. I have always heard Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” described as the guidebook or tome to loss. While I love that memoir (and while it’s not a competition), I was absolutely floored by this account, and the vibrant emotional depths Doty plunges into will always make this my go-to memoir on love and grief. Basic summary: Mark Doty, a phenomenal poet, recounts what it was like losing his long-term partn...

The best, and most moving, book I have read in a long time.

"We are elements of the world's consciousness of itself, and thus we are necessary: replaceable and irreplaceable at once.""The future's an absence, a dark space up ahead like the socket of a pulled tooth."I first came across Doty's work about a decade ago, when he visited my university for a reading. In preparation for that, I read his collection of poetry Fire to Fire and his childhood memoir Firebird, both of which I loved. The latter is about realizing one's identity and growing up as a gay

This is one of my absolute favorite books of all time! I read it in a theological studies seminar back in my undergrad days, and if you need any indication that LMU is more of a liberal Catholic school, you can consider that I was reading this beautiful book, about a gay man whose lover is dying of AIDS, as part of the course curriculum.

In "Heaven's Gate a memoir" Mark Doty writes eloquently about his life with his partner Wally, and the grief from his slow descent to death. He captures their experience, what it was like living with AIDS in the early years when there were no medications and the doctors had no answers. He sums up his grief, "I don’t know anything different about death than I ever have, but I feel differently. I inhabit this difference in feeling—or does it live in me?—at the same time as I’m sorrowing. The possi...

I read this when it was published. And then read it again in one sitting this past weekend. Broke my heart a second time.

Marriage changes things. Beyond the obvious, subtler things reveal themselves to you over time. You slowly get used to the weight of the person next to you in bed, the sound of his/her deep breathing at night, or that hacking cough that doesn't sound right — you know, the little things. Another thing that you start to think about (usually right before sleep) is what happens when you grow old and one of you passes away first. You start to imagine both scenarios — if I was to die first and if she

"And then I thought of us as standing on a kind of sandbar, the present a narrow strip of land which had seemed, previously, enormous, without any clear limits. Oh, there was a limit out there, somewhere, of course, but not anywhere in sight. But the virus was a kind of chill, violent current, one which was eroding, at who knew what speed, the ground upon which we stood. If you watched, you could see the edges crumbling."I lived this book. That's not a typo—I loved this book, of course, but I me...

I just bought Mark Doty's latest collection of poems today, Fire to Fire . So far it's pretty great, most notably for its shimmering depictions of natural phenomena ranging from a bat flying in rural Britain to the ocean shores of Provincetown. Doty's gift for lyrical description is so impressive he'll actually startle me with his language, stringing words together to create beautiful, naturalistic illusions, like some kind of linguistic magician. This talent is also found in his prose works,...

This book destroyed me. It made me weep loudly and openly in public, warmed my heart, and inundated me with achingly beautiful language.

Memories of love. And dogs. And a monument to both.

​Heaven’s Coast is not an easily categorized memoir. Yes, it is a memoir of grieving of loss, and it is elegiac, but it is not simply a grief memoir. In it Mark Doty chronicles his partner, Wally’s, decline from AIDS and the effect it has on their lives as they try to figure out how to live through Wally’s dying. That is the machinery of the book though – the source of its narrative thrust. Richer than that, it is the story of a questing mind trying to reckon with AIDS and death, both in the une...

Mark Doty is an openly gay poet who has for many years used his work as powerful LGBTQ+ activism. He is best known for his poetry, but any lover of his poems should be just as excited to read this memoir. HEAVEN’S COAST is a lyrical, emotional account of the years surrounding the death of Doty’s partner, Wally. Doty recounts Wally’s heartbreaking battle with AIDS—from his initial diagnosis to his devolution as the disease progresses to his final moments. Doty also reminisces over the early years...

Beautifully written, but I cannot finish it as it just to difficult to remember this time in my own life. If you're stronger than me, it should be a great read as this is a man who knows how to write and to evoke every emotion as he does....

This was stunning, beautiful, speechlessly powerful, and the longest poem I have ever read. A poet writing a prose memoir is bound to be poetical, but this was more than that, it was a poem on every page, every chapter, within, and for every breath. There are many times I feel that the universe is tapped into my interior landscape and gives me what I need: rain in some cases, snow in others, a sunset, a moon rise, etc. And when I need it, I have always felt my spirit lift to meet it, and absorb

I'm glad Doty wrote this but I'm sorry he lived it. Harder even than Wally’s death, my life’s watershed, toward which all the time before it moved, and all the time after hurries away.There are times I feel I’m translating, in my head, from one language to another; I’ve become a citizen of grief’s country, and now I find I don’t always easily speak the old tongue I used to know so well.“Does a snowflake in an avalanche feel responsible?”"And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luc...

I was given this book by a friend who likely lived through the AIDS era of loss and uncertainty. This memoir is a poignant story of the death of the author’s partner by AIDS. Though the premise is sad and it is sad (AIDS, similar to COVID, inexplicably and unpredictably took some and spared others) - it was also not sad but so heartwarming and tender. Doty is a poet and I loved reading about their life together, their houses, the towns, their friends, the seashore, the dogs. And I found a lot of...