Drought-Adapted Vine

by Donald Revell

"Donald Revell writes with a drunken equipoise among the weedy flowers and bees of roadside museums and vacant churches. . . .[Here] are poems that border the hereafter and revive the child's play of prophecy. What miraculous assistance they provide!"—Dean Young Donald Revell pushes boundaries between words and music, transcending our current notion of beauty and innocence. Personal memory, the visionary, the eccentric, and the divine intertwine between networks of stories that connect past and present through paint strokes, composition, and pastoral lyric. Pure of heart poems lie down in a vibrant field of paradox, basking gratefully in the sun of unknowing. From "Beyond Disappointment": Hence and farewell "life's journey."
It makes no sense. The children mock us with it.
A typewriter beneath the Christmas tree
Calls to the icecaps. Illustrated monthlies
Burn in the wasps' burnt nest. It is
Such perfections make the sun to rise. Donald Revell has authored eleven collections of poetry, most recently Tantivy (2012) and The Bitter Withy (2009). Winner of the PEN USA Translation Award and two-time winner of the PEN 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 awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Former editor-in-chief of Denver Quarterly , he now serves as poetry editor of Colorado Review . Revell is the director of graduate studies and professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Revell has won numerous honors and awards for his work, beginning with his first book, From the Abandoned Cities, which was a National Poetry Series winner. More recently, he won the 2004 Lenore Marshall Award and is a two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award in poetry. He has also received the Gertrude Stein Award, two Shestack Prizes, two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as from the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations. His most recent book is The Bitter Withy (Alice James Books, 2009).

Revell has taught at the Universities of Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, Alabama, Colorado, and Utah. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He lives in Las Vegas with his wife, poet Claudia Keelan, and their children. In addition to his writing, translating, and teaching, Revell was Editor of Denver Quarterly from 1988–94, and has been a poetry editor of Colorado Review since 1996.

Revell received his B.A. from Harpur College in 1975, his M.A. from SUNY Binghamton in 1977 and his Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo in 1980.

Reviews

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is revell’s 21st book, more or less. I like his mordant thoughts and constant turning towards, reflections with, and allusions to nature and plants, dirt, weather, trees and such, death and love.
He lives and works in las vegas. This collection is more or less about death and dying, and living the good life. His book ‘bitter whithy” is what hooked me on him, it was about death and dying, and loving.
From Graves Variations, the last stanza

“Clothed in Eden’s garments, I find candy
Easy to come by. Immortality
Without flowers is a better sleep
Than madcap syllables, than the kissing bijou.
God, at last, has taken me at my word.
He has taken the green jewels out of my eyes,
And they are eyes once more. He has bound my mind
Onto a wheel----wheeeeeee! Ixion or Gladys
Gladdest is. To die with a forlorn hope,
But soon to be raised, reeks pure mystery
And proves a mountain in me, white earth
Beloved of aspen trees twinned at birth.


The Bitter Withy

[Kevin Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75. Revell is a bit too much air and angels for me most of the time -- I suppose if I knew more about postmodern Christian theology and had more of a tolerance for breathless phrasing, I'd like him more. That being said, the third section of this book is a sonnet sequence with anchored characters he's addressing which gives him and his reader some solid ground on which to meet. In those poems, he is very good.