Selected and Rearranged

Unless one is familiar, even intimate, with a poet's production, one can have little understanding of why which poems are collected in a volume. But once they're there, any reader can, and perhaps should, speculate on why they are grouped and arranged as they are. This is something we may discuss in two days in our meeting on Mark Doty's My Alexandria. This third book of poems was his break-out collection. Fifteen years later in his eighth collection Fire to Fire in addition to new poems some poems were selected from the preceding seven. The third volume did very well. Only four poems ("Heaven," "The Wings," "To Bessie Drennan," and "Becoming a Meadow") were omitted. But the remainder were degrouped and rearranged:

   Demolition
   The Ware Collection
   Broadway
   Days of 1981

   Human Figures

   Almost Blue

   Esta Noche
   Fog
   Night Ferry
   No

   Brilliance
   With Animals
   Bill’s Story
   Chanteuse
   Difference
   The Advent Calendars
   Lament-Heaven

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this matter.