Chariot

by Timothy Donnelly

Timothy Donnelly’s fourth collection of poems, Chariot , ferries the reader toward an endless horizon of questioning that is both philosophical and deeply embodied.  “How did we get here?” he asks in his title poem—one of several in conversation with French symbolist Odilon Redon—to which he responds, “Unclear, if it matters; what matters // is we stay—aloft in possible color.” With a similar sensibility to previous collections The Problem of the Many and The Cloud Corporation (winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award), Chariot deepens Donnelly’s inquiry into artistic histories, from Jean Cocteau to The Cocteau Twins, while celebrating the power of poetic imagination to transport us to new zones of meaning and textual bliss. The collection also marks an exciting shift in form for Donnelly, who confines these new poems to twenty lines each, so that to read Chariot is to look through a many-paned, future-facing window, refracting and reflecting, letting all the light in.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

Published May 2, 2023

About the author

Timothy Donnelly is the author of The Cloud Corporation (Wave Books, 2010) and Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit (Grove Press, 2003). His work has been translated into German and Italian and has also appeared in numerous anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems, Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, and Poet, Poems, Poetry edited by Helen Vendler. A graduate of Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Princeton Universities, he is a poetry editor for Boston Review and teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.

For more info, go to
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/66-...

Reviews

[Mike Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donnelly’s poems encapsulate many of the contemporary paradoxes of living and of reflecting life in poetry while of negotiating the world through various lenses. Some parts challenging, some parts self-serious, and some absurd, Chariot is a vibrant collection of poems.

https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/...

Read my full review at Colorado Review of this collection.^^

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like framing this book with that Yeats quote about “the centre cannot hold," because almost every one of Donnelly's poems feel really interested in falling apart under the pressure of the poet thinking so much about the center. And then miraculously (ironically) their center keeps holding, just not with the kind of cohesion a reader would presume. Like think of each poem as though it was making a single sentence, and, on one hand, the sentence’s meaning is clear. But as soon as you start to consider the sentence word by word, and you take into account the meaning of each individual word, the sentence risks disintegrating. Yet a thoughtful consideration of the sentence would remember the sentence's original clarity, no matter how the distinct definition for each word in the sentence might make a full reading of the sentence nothing but chaos. The center of it “holds,” and how people can reconcile these two things together could, perhaps, be the thematic center of Chariot. Especially as it pertains to the poet, Timothy Donnelly. And especially as it pertains to the ideals (beauty or art or mortality as it comes to odds with vitality) that Donnelly is concerned with in his life and in his position as a poet.

And I have to admit, I keep wishing the poems would expand past their 20-line standard form. Though it’s such a selfish complaint. What if these poems could grow? What if they could expand like the poems did in The Cloud Corporation or The Problem of the Many?

And, of course, what kind of review relies upon selfish wishes? To review means to observe the poems as they are. Their threat to not hold to their center. Their particularity that needles at any consistently wrought observation. And, finally, their sentences that come just shy of ponderous. Or labyrinthine. But can still feel exhaustive or extended. Oh, these Timothy Donnelly sentences that lend linguistic volume to the 20-line form he has chosen for himself. They’re like elephant feet that have been clothed with velvet socks. Subtle-ish, thumping-ish. And leaving some readers to perhaps scan for iambs. Though they’re not there, or they’re not formally present, or at least not consistently. But you can still hear that rhythm. Which, like with iambic pentameter, does its own stretching for the ideas.

[Lola Anaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really liked the first half of this book a lot! the second half was good, just didn't stand out as much thematically i guess. lots of ekphrastic poetry too which i enjoyed and donnelly has a lot of beautiful offerings throughout these poems.

"This is life, absolutely
and without distinction, such that even if I wanted to discern
the face that's wet from sweat from one that's crying, I could not."
- from "Eau de Nil"

[Saksham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting set of poems, which sparked enough curiosity throughout its journey, a few chuckles, a few ah's, however, most of the poems did leave a gap that needed to be filled, none of the poems came to a satisfying end

[Nicolas Duran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some favorites: Excelsior, Where Space Begins, Weather Heard as Music, A Page from the Weather, Home at Last, Night of the Earworm, Notes on Flow, Hush, Golden Hour, To Eat a Peach. Really enjoyed reading this slowly, happy to have read it.

[Rachel B · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 golden Seattle dogs

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best.

i couldn't bring myself to keep reading it because I didn't want to be finished.

physics and poetry... are they so different?

[Tim Morrissey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. Someone has been reading up on their environmental humanities.