Mark Doty - "mackerel in the Fresh-Fish Display"

Mark Doty started his essay with an elaborate description about the "mackerel in the fresh-fish display." To some eyes, mackerels could just appear as fish that were "rowed and stacked brilliantly against the white of the crushed ice." However, Mr. Doty was mesmerized by "how black and glistening the bands of dark scales were, and the prismed sheen of the patches between, and their shining flat eyes."

Mark Doty's goal was to "inquiry, the attempt to get at what it is that's so interesting about what's struck [him]." His attempt was to change things that are so mundane and dull in our daily life to something that captivates and fascinate one another. He figured that "what [he] can see is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg," but with the right procedure, "the image which he had been intrigued by will become a metaphor, will yield depth and meaning." Furthermore, it was not just the beauty that compelled, but "something else, some gravity or charge to this image that makes me need to investigate it."

In order to provide visual imaginary, Mr. Doty emphasized on mackerel and abalone, which could refer to the souls on ice. By using some examples from souls on ice, Mark Doty delivered visible messages that dealt with his maxim. Mackerel could be just "considered as a fish as replication of the ideal, or imagination of an intricate creation of an obsessively repetitive jeweler." Furthermore, Mark Doty mentioned abalone as "prismatics and the wildly rainbowed mirror of a soapbubble sphere."

With the visual aid, Mark Doty clarified his notion to attend to things that "trust part of my imagination that gropes forward, feeling its way toward what it needs; to watch for the signs of fascination, the sense of compelled attention."