Personal reflection on World AIDS Day
Mark Doty, a noted poet and University of Houston professor, shared his works about AIDS awareness.
The Daily Pennsylvanian
By Christina Young
Not all poets possess the power to move an audience to tears. But on World AIDS Day, author and University of Houston Professor Mark Doty elicited both tears and laughter with his writing.
Doty, author of five poetry books and winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, spoke at the Arch in front of about 70 people on Friday.
Having witnessed his longtime partner's death from AIDS, the lauded writer has experienced the disease firsthand.
Doty said he resides in a historically gay community, where about "a funeral a week" occurred at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Using excerpts from his poetry and prose, Doty shared his reflections on an almost twenty-year experience with the disease.
Central to Doty's works is the sharp divide between the time prior to 1995 and after, when new drugs were discovered that prolonged AIDS patients' lives -- changing the status of the AIDS threat from "emergency to crisis."
He added that as the immediate threat of AIDS slightly diminished, people started to forget the disease's fatal impact, experiencing something like "amnesia".
Citing three types of such amnesia -- cultural, personal, and national/social -- Doty spoke about his observations of cultural amnesia in contemporary literature.
Doty said personal amnesia refers to his own loss of memories, noting that his roommates in New York -- during the early 1980s -- also died from AIDS, but he had not thought of them at all for years.
As an example of national/social amnesia, he used the film The Broken Hearts Club -- which depicts "young, beautiful, gay men" concerned only with relationships and neglecting to address the issue of AIDS or HIV. Doty added that the film's omission exemplifies his concern with the amnesia that pervades America.
"We live in a country that fears history... we have to work to remember," he said.
To remember, Doty writes poetry.
His poem "Brilliance" describes a friend's experience volunteering as a companion to AIDS patients in their final days. A line in the poem -- written from the patients' perspective -- reads, "I can't love anything. I can't finish."
At the same time, Doty injects humor into his writing. He read one piece written in the voice of a dog that Doty gave to his partner four weeks before he passed away.
Excerpts from "Atlantis", a poem that chronicles the progression of his partner's battle with AIDS, left a somber mood in the auditorium. A section of the poem describes his desire for a new dog, despite knowing his time is limited.
Doty asked the audience, "How many men would want another attachment as they are leaving this world?"
The speech touched many audience members.
"It's so tragic listening to him...knowing that he survived through that, yet he's still going on and still creating," said Artis Chester, a College and Wharton junior who is the director of Facilitating Learning About Sexual Health marketing. FLASH co-sponsored the event.
To get tested for HIV locally, contact Penn's on-campus anonymous site at the Treatment Research Center on 39th and Chestnut streets, (215) 563-0658. Or check out other nearby locations at: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~safersex/resourc.htm