I REVIEWED THIS for a blog of much greater legitimacy than this one, so I will be brief: Donnelly is four books in after twenty years, and not a dud yet. I'm not prepared to say this is actually better than The Problem of the Many, but it may be, and as an extended exploration of a closed form (every poem, save one adaptation from the Irish, is in five four-line stanzas) it is unique in Donnelly's oeuvre.
Besides being a thorough exploration of form, the book continues the engagement with public and political concerns that we saw in The Problem of the Many. The first of two poems titled "Chariot" hits upon a Donne-worthy conceit that captures the book's mindful relation to both poetry and the world: the poem is the chair that carries the world as the world is the chair that carries the poem.
New books from Donnelly and Robyn Schiff in the same year? Hail, 2023, for bringing us these gifts amongst the lumps of tsuris.
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