Synopses & Reviews
"These poems make you want to read them over and over, you want so much to understand their magic, their vastness. We suddenly have a master. God bless his courage, his knowledge, his playfulness, his stubbornness, his loving attention. God pity his grief."-Gerald Stern
What is a nation when it ignores history? What is a man when he forgets his life? This acclaimed poet's tenth collection chronicles our seeming, and apocalyptic, liberation from conscience-and even consciousness itself. These masterful poems, written in Donald Revell's increasingly more enraptured and oracular style, delineate the consequences of such disregard in a manner both spiritually generous and urgent.
From "Election Year":
. . . You asked for my autobiography.
Imagine the greeny clicking sound
Of hummingbirds in a dry wood,
And there you'd have it. Other birds
Pour over the walls now.
I'd never suspected: every day,
Although the nation is done for,
I find new flowers.
Poet, translator, and critic Donald Revellis the author of nine previous collections of poetry, most recently Pennyweight Windows: New and Selected Poems.Winner of numerous awards, fellowships, and prizes, he is currently a professor of English at the University of Utah and poetry editor of the Colorado Review.
Review
These poems make you want to read them over and over, you want so much to understand their magic, their vastness. We suddenly have a master. God bless his courage, his knowledge, his playfulness, his stubbornness, his loving attention. God pity his grief.”Gerald Stern
"Revell is a post-Romantic, his natural imagery clear and immediate, his feelings never very far from his sleeve, his tone approaching a prayerful devotion. . ."Library Journal
Synopsis
Acclaimed poet's tenth collection chronicles our seeming, and apocalyptic, liberation from conscience and consciousness itself.
Synopsis
What is a nation when it ignores history? What is a man when he forgets his life? This acclaimed poets tenth collection chronicles our seeming, and apocalyptic, liberation from conscienceand even consciousness itself. These masterful poems, written in Donald Revells increasingly more enraptured and oracular style, delineate the consequences of such disregard in a manner both spiritually generous and urgent.
About the Author
Donald Revell is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing programs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A THIEF OF STRINGS is his tenth poetry collection, published by Alice James. Twice winner of the PEN Center USA Award for Poetry, he has also won the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Prize and is a former fellow of the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations. Additionally, he has twice been granted fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. Donald Revell's previous translations include A SEASON IN HELL by Arthur Rimbaud (Omnidawn 2007), which won the PEN USA Translation Award. He has also translated The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems by Guillame Apollinaire, and Alcools: Poems by Guillame Apollinaire, both published by Wesleyan University Press. His books of essays include INVISIBLE GREEN: SELECTED PROSE, published by Omnidawn. Former editor-in-chief of Denver Quarterly, he now serves as poetry editor of Colorado Review. Revell lives in the desert south of Las Vegas with his wife, poet Claudia Keelan, and their children Benjamin Brecht and Lucie Ming.