New Dark Ages

by Donald Revell

Evocative poems about the most simple and complicated ideas.

Winner of the Pen Center USA West Literary Award in Poetry (1990)

New Dark Ages is a book of ideas that exhibits a rare quality – adventurousness. The poems are intelligent and deeply felt, complex and crystal clear. Donald Revell writes about things as tender and as complicated as happiness and freedom. His poetry brims with images, wonder, and discovery, as it seeks to answer such questions as :If the original idea of America is defunct, what has taken its place? If privacy is no more, how do we go about the business of loving? If God and history have become one, what is the relationship between morality and expediency?" And, above all, "Why is it that, in spite of all, the twentieth century is so heart-breakingly beautiful – a true vindication of humanism?"

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

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

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revell’s poems look at the world from a lofty distance. I realized while reading him how hard it is to untangle poet from poem. How the fact that I was reading a white, male poet colours my experience of his poems. There’s a kind of arrogance to his declarations and proclamations. A kind of assumed air of authority, a quality that is both attractive and repellent.

In spite of this ambivalent review, I enjoyed his poems, particularly “Survey,” “The Judas Nocturne” and “St. Lucy’s Day.”

[PEN Center USA · Rating 5 out of 5]

1991 PEN Center USA Award Winner for Poetry

[Christopherseelie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these poems point towards ambitious truths.