A Powerful and Frightening Love

A Review of Turtle, Swan

“Turtle, Swan” is the title poem in Mark Doty’s first collection of poems Turtle, Swan, published in 1987. Fourteen stanzas, each six lines long, weave together the lives of a swan, a turtle, the narrator, and his partner. While Doty shifts from descriptions of various creatures and experiences, his use of enjambment carries the reader from one thought to the next fluidly and without pause. The first nine stanzas recount two occasions in which weather conditions or chance caused first a swan, and then a turtle to cross the path of the poet and his partner on their way home from work. The final stanzas relate these animals to the poet’s feelings towards his partner, and his fears of losing him to death.

Doty makes beautiful use of metaphors and similes throughout his poem, and particularly in reference to the turtle and the swan. The swan, for example, was “white architecture/ rippling like a pond’s rain-pocked skin” while the turtle lumbered “head up like a missionary moving certainly/ into the country of his hopes.” These metaphors, providing specific images that magnify the small but beautiful qualities of the creatures, become more layered as the poet relates his deep adoration for his lover by comparing his beauty and strength to that of the turtle and the swan. Thus, the title “Turtle, Swan” refers to his lover and all that he embodies.

Neither the reader nor the speaker knows what became of either the turtle or the swan. The swan receives no further mention after it lets out an authoritative hiss. The turtle may or may not have become a stain on the pavement in a nearby town. Both appearances were fleeting. The poet’s attention to these brief encounters reflects their power and the attachment that can arise from such encounters. The poet’s uncertainty about whether or not the stain marks the death of the turtle reveals an anxiety about death associated with a loved one.

Another way “Turtle, Swan” is organized is beginning with the poet and his partners’ identity as a single unit, and closing with the poet's individual journey and fears. The beginning of the poem reads, “Because the road to our house/ is a back road,” and it goes on to speak primarily of “we” and “us”. Together, the two men encounter what life throws at them, and they very comfortably work together. When the snapping turtle takes a chunk out of his lover’s shoe but leaves him otherwise unharmed, the poet is as relieved as if it is he who has escaped a trip to the emergency room. At the end of the day, the two of them head for the same home, talking together about what they experienced. Beginning in the tenth stanza, the narrator relates another story about being apart from his lover at a movie theater, unable to find him. In this section, the narrator is no longer part of a unit, and this causes him to feel vulnerable and afraid that some day he will be on his own.

Doty's greatest fear at this time was that his partner, Wally Roberts would die from AIDS. This was written during the late 80s, when the AIDS epidemic was becoming a painful reality for more and more gay men in the United States. Roberts tested positive for HIV two years after “Turtle, Swan” was published. He died in 1994, and this was known to be an extraordinarily difficult time for Doty (Contemporary Authors).

The one phrase that is repeated four times in “Turtle, Swan” is I don’t know. Some literature is written to persuade its audience to think or act a certain way. Sometimes it is written to speak truths that need to be heard. “Try To Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski, written following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, was a source of comfort for the many people troubled and confused about how to go on with their lives as bad things happened. It asserted that the profound, beautiful acts of creation and love that occur everyday should be enough to make the world livable. Sometimes poetry like this is needed. However, Doty’s questions and doubts are extremely powerful because they do not offer any kind of comfort to the reader. Instead of offering answers, he presents his darkest, most intimate worries, and in doing so he creates art that all readers should be able to understand and empathize with. It is an example of how poetry can help one individual identify with another on a deep level.

“Turtle, Swan” remains a poignant piece because Doty’s fears were far from irrational. When Roberts died, Doty was left alone, no longer part of a unit. Of course, all humans come into the world and leave it alone. It is a universal truth. Ultimately, everyone is responsible only for himself, but Doty’s wish was for the man he loved not “ever to die.” He was terrified to lose his partner. He uses the example of being in a dark movie theater, alone and confused. He imagines that being one person, without a companion, will be like being in a dark place, unable to find the right way to proceed.

Even though Doty was enormously shaken following the death of his greatest love, he was able to conquer his fear of being completely lost. He went on to write a highly acclaimed memoir, and continues to compose poetry that embraces the pain he experienced, even transcending that pain to write about beauty and hope. “Turtle, Swan” is a snapshot of Mark Doty’s life in a time in which he was happy, but far from naïve. He recognized that to love deeply means to risk losing everything and having to start over. “Turtle, Swan,” read in the context of Mark Doty’s life thus far, is a bittersweet testament to powerful and frightening love.