Customer Reviews

Donatello's Version

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In his "Afterword" to Raging Beauty (1994) James Scully says, "I know longer write poetry." With Donatello's Version that is no longer true. Oh, Scully's back all right and none too soon. DV's poems will rip your head off. If you're looking for Odes, dig out your Keats (nothing wrong with that). But if you're looking for poems on depleted uranium, death by atomic bomb, boxcars filled with victims and victimizers (ie, us), Hamlet American-style, old women babbling about leaving the party that is their final home, and bombed out wedding parties, Scully's your man. And Scully needs to be your man. He doesn't just put his readers' feet to the fire, he makes us part of the fire. He makes us feel the heat, question why it burns and who...and who started each particular fire. And, most importantly, who allows those fires to continue and continue and continue to burn so destructively.

It would be tempting to call Scully's work Poetry of Witness (as a blurb on this page does) except witnesses are usually detached - spectators. You will not feel detached. Scully has no patience for passivity. You will have to deal with "those impossible dead/growing out of their deaths/into an army of trees" ("Qana"). When, as Hamlet did, you "discover [your] own hand in [your] own blood" ("The Hamlet Mess"), you will realize the point is not to wash away the blood but to do something about its being there.

(Special bonus comment: Start with Donatello's Version then the read Scully's necessary essay "Afterword: Culture War" from Raging Beauty: Selected Poems - and go from there. (And thank Curbstone Press for championing Scully's work.))