A Display of Mackerel by Mark Doty
"A Display of Mackerel" by Mark Doty is a free-verse poem that contemplates the relationship between beauty, life, and death through the imagery of mackerel displayed on ice. Comprising seventeen three-line stanzas, the poem begins with a straightforward depiction of the fish, which soon evolves into a deeper exploration of their beauty and the philosophical implications of their existence. Doty reflects on how these dead creatures, despite their state, embody a radiant and precious essence that offers a counterpoint to the fear of mortality.
Through vivid imagery and paradoxical associations, the poet invites readers to consider the interconnectedness of life and death, suggesting that beauty can serve as a form of redemption. By drawing connections between the mackerel and broader themes of spirituality and collective existence, Doty posits that individual struggles may be transcended by embracing a more universal sense of beauty. The poem ultimately transforms the fish from mere objects of observation into intimate symbols of a shared, shimmering experience of existence, highlighting the potential for spiritual awakening in everyday encounters.
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Subject Terms
A Display of Mackerel by Mark Doty
First published: 1995, in Atlantis
Type of poem: Meditation
The Poem
Mark Doty’s “A Display of Mackerel” is a meditation on beauty and on beauty’s ability to triumph over death. This free-verse poem comprises seventeen three-line stanzas and describes the poet’s encounter with a display of fish. Doty skillfully explores the rich implications of this encounter. As the living poet admires the dead fish, the human soul encounters the extraordinary beauty of the display and finds within this beauty a possible antidote for the fear of death. With gradually expanding complexity, Doty infuses this encounter with associations and intimations that transcend the mere fact of mackerel on ice. Through a systematic appraisal of paradoxes, the poet leads his reader along the pathways of the poetic imagination, dismantling humanity’s anxieties about life, death, and the eternity of the soul.
“A Display of Mackerel” opens with a straightforward description of the fish lying on ice in rows. Having established a foundation of mundane description, Doty quickly departs from factuality and starts to explore the associations the mackerel inspire in him. Shortly after the first stanza, the first images of the extraordinary, the beautiful, and the precious begin to intrude upon the everyday: Not only are the fish dark and cold, but also “each [is] a foot of luminosity.” By the third stanza, the fish have become a lens through which Doty will consider important issues of existence: “radiant sections/ like seams of lead/ in a Tiffany window.” Despite the fact that they are dead, cold, and nonhuman, the mackerel represent a precious, shimmering realm of existence far removed from unpleasant and unsettling conceptions of death.
In the next few stanzas, Doty extends his meditations on life and death and draws the reader into this process by way of direct address. The poet instructs the readers to expand their consideration of the fish: “think abalone” and “think sun on gasoline.” In the tradition of Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth—who viewed nature as a primary source of the highest poetic and spiritual revelation—Doty perceives divine significance in the universe of beauty and selflessness the mackerel inhabit: “Splendor, and splendor,/ and not a one in any way/ distinguished from the other.”
Midway through the poem, the poetic transformation of the mackerel into exemplars of life, death, and the unity of existence is complete. As the momentum of poetic imagery and paradox increases, “A Display of Mackerel” accumulates terms and phrases that suggest spiritual and existential complexity: “they’re all exact expressions/ of the one soul,/ each a perfect fulfillment/ of heaven’s template.” Once the connection between the mackerel and spirituality has been consummated, Doty consolidates the poem’s personification of and identification with the fish by considering an existential trade. Would humanity exchange its troubled, individualistic ideas of life for the serenity and beauty of a mackerel’s existence?
Suppose we could iridesce,
Having extracted beauty and this question from his encounter with the display of mackerel, Doty completes the arc of the poem by returning to the fish. While they were an objective “they” in the poem’s opening description, the fish are personified by Doty at the end of the poem; they are no longer alien but intimate. He knows that they prefer to be as they are, “flashing” and “multitudinous.” He knows that they do not care that they are dead. He can imagine their happiness “even on ice, to be together, selfless,/ which is the price of gleaming.”
Forms and Devices
“A Display of Mackerel” and the collection to which it belongs, Atlantis, mark an important transition in Doty’s work. While My Alexandria (1993) is praised for its explorations of the theme of loss, the poems in that collection articulate a conflicted and skeptical attitude about poetry’s transcendent powers. In contrast, “A Display of Mackerel” insists upon hope in the face of loss and revels in the ability of poetry to redeem and transform reality. In this poem and throughout Atlantis, Doty constructs numerous paradoxical linkages between the natural and the human-made (“sun on gasoline”), between the dead and the living (“bolting forward, heedless of stasis”), and between individuality and collectivity (“the rainbowed school// in which no verb is singular,/ or every one is”). These paradoxical juxtapositions produce an atmosphere in which impossibilities become possible, connections between disparate elements flourish, and the poetic imagination transforms everyday reality.
The poem mixes several levels of poetic language to create this magical, transformative effect. The language of precise description (“parallel rows”) combines with spiritual terms (“each a perfect fulfillment/ of heaven’s template”), blends with language relating to natural beauty (“luminosity,” “radiant,” “shimmer,” “gleaming”), and mixes with worldly value (“Tiffany window,” and “this enameling the jeweler’s/ made”). This combination of linguistic levels produces a fluid, multiple context in which Doty reveals his meditations on life and death. When taken as a whole, this mixture of levels of beauty and value suggests one of the important meanings of the poem: There is spiritual awakening in the most ordinary moments, and there is significance in the most accidental encounters. By combining this multiplicity of types of language into one poem, Doty replicates the spiritual oneness the poem proposes.
The juxtaposition of paradoxical ideas and this mixture of levels of language support a third poetic technique contributing to the poem’s meditative atmosphere: Imagery, that very basic element of poetic expression, is amplified in “A Display of Mackerel.” Doty’s quickly shifting use of poetic imagery feeds the paradoxical and combinative logic of the poem. In the course of the poem, the fish are related to images of light, windows, rainbows, soapbubbles, jewelry, and a classroom. The speed at which Doty introduces and then alters these images contributes to the wonder and magic that lies behind the poem’s expression. In general, Doty’s imagery falls into two categories that, taken together, point to the two realms of existence the poem’s meditations are bridging. On one hand, the poem is filled with images of external beauty; on the other hand, there are many images of internal spirituality and intellect. Together, the two categories form an equation between beauty and spirit that Doty extends to all of creation. Living or dead, fish or human, individual or collective, life is beautiful; the end of life need not be tragic.