SOURCE: Doty, Mark, and Michael Klein. “A Talk with Mark Doty.” PN Review 21, no. 6 (July-August 1995): 22-7.

In the following interview, Doty discusses his creative process and aesthetic concerns, his thematic preoccupation with AIDS and gay identity, the influence of place and autobiography in his work, and his experience as a teacher.

Mark Doty is the author of four books of poetry, Turtle, Swan, Bethlehem in Broad Daylight, My Alexandria, and the forthcoming Atlantis. For the greater part of the last decade, he taught in the MFA Program for Writers at Vermont College and at Sarah Lawrence College. My Alexandria, published in 1993 by the University of Illinois Press after being selected by Philip Levine for the National Poetry Series, won the National Book Critic's Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was nominated for the National Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award. Doty recently received...