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.
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. How can we see, as Thoreau did, a radiant nature within a nation at war? What can a 21st-century poetry say about the primeval wisdom in a canyon, a hummingbird, a brook? And how can a poet be at once a true Christian and a re-creator of the modern word? Such questions guide the rightly confident, brilliantly convincing Revell throughout this 10th book, his first since the new-and-selected Pennyweight Windows (2005). Many poets have tried to express such faith, such anger, such awe, but few do so with such original brevity and joy. "Poplars" zips from "abandoned cars... in the dusty air" to the Beijing Olympics to a ringing credo: "God is the sun truly, you know, and He moves fast"; "All together it is one God, who never made a desert,/ And whose circus we are, all clowns swimming." The 13-part title poem concludes a book-long exploration of belief and skepticism, self-doubt and familial love that also takes in the landscapes of New England and the mountain West; the poetry and prose of Keats, Goethe and Rimbaud (whom Revell has translated); and the consolation of classic films. No poet so innovative now is more accessible, and no poet half so accessible in recent years has made the language so new. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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“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
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More About the Author
Poet, translator and critic Donald Revell is the author of nine previous collections of poetry, most recently Pennyweight Windows: New and Selected Poems. Winner of the 2004 Lenore Marshall Award and two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award in Poetry,
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compels the reader with its visceral evocation of raw sentiment.,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Thief of Strings (Paperback)
Award-winning poet, translator and critic Donald Revell presents A Thief of Strings, his tenth collection of poetry. The brief, free-verse poems revolve around humankind's apparent liberation from conscience, with potentially earth-shattering results. At times a lament for man's inhumanity to man, at times an inquiry as to whether consciousness itself is drifting away, A Thief of Strings compels the reader with its visceral evocation of raw sentiment. "The Wisdoms": What happened? I was one / Gladly suffered the believing I am I. / A cut tree weeps a stream of ants from its wounds. / Not two feet away, sage and verbena thrive / In a cascade of blue differences / Over the lizards and dirt. / La di da. To matter to me, / Time was, a man or woman had to love me. / That was America / That was a chief concern. / What happened is my eyes have no color. / I love the way a flower steps away / From a dead tree. / Broken glass is alive too, / In the colors. In them, I was a republic."
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