Return to the City of White Donkeys: Poems

by James Tate

In his fourteenth collection of poetry, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner James Tate continues exploring his own peculiar brand of poetry, transforming our everyday world into one where women give birth to wolves, wild babies are found in gardens, and Saint Nick visits on a hot July day. Tate's signature style draws on a marvelous variety of voices and characters, all of which sound vaguely familiar, but are each fantastically unique, brilliant, and eccentric. Yet, as Charles Simic observed in The New York Review of Books , "With all his reliance on chance, Tate has a serious purpose. He's searching for a new way to write a lyric poem." He continues, "To write a poem out of nothing at all is Tate's genius. For him, the poem is something one did not know was there until it was written down ... Just about anything can happen next in this kind of poetry and that is its attraction ... Tate is not worried about leaving us a little dazed ... He succeeds in ways for which there are few precedents. He makes me think that anti-poetry is the best friend poetry ever had."

Genres: Poetry, Humor, Short Stories, Fiction, The United States Of America, 21st Century, American

173 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He taught creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he worked since 1971. He was a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, along with Dara Wier and Peter Gizzi.

Dudley Fitts selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967) for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Despite the early praise he received Tate alienated some of his fans in the seventies with a series of poetry collections that grew more and more strange.

He published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, a National Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was also a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Tate's writing style is difficult to describe, but has been identified with the postmodernist and neo-surrealist movements. He has been known to play with phrases culled from news items, history, anecdotes, or common speech; later cutting, pasting, and assembling such divergent material into tightly woven compositions that reveal bizarre and surreal insights into the absurdity of human nature.

Reviews

[Julie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've ever read Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles or George Saunders's Pastoralia, you may understand that certain books, certain writing, can not be accurately defined by a genre.

If you're familiar with either or both works, you have a grasp of the conundrum. Are these stories Sci-Fi? Fantasy? Dystopian? Surreal?
All of the above?

Surrealists “seek to overcome the contradictions of the conscious and unconscious minds by creating unreal or bizarre stories full of juxtapositions.”

Okay, so, based on that definition I have no hesitation in referring to Bradbury or Saunders as “surrealists. . .”

But, what in the hell am I calling this James Tate guy?

James Tate was born in 1943 (the same year as two of my favorite men—my father, and Kent Haruf), and, from what I've recently learned, he was not only a prominent professor of creative writing, his poetry was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and National Book Award in 1994.

So, no schlub, when it came to writing.

He wrote some prose, but he wrote poetry primarily, but it's not what you think of as “poetry.” Each “poem” in this collection, return to the city of white donkeys is like a little character sketch. A sketch of different men and women, every time. . .

And they're weird as hell.

They're also poignant, sometimes, and sad as hell. The recurrent themes: being lost, feeling alienated by society, struggling to have an identity. Most of us can understand these fears on a primal level. Mr. Tate just takes it to the next stage, adding monkeys who can talk, women who mate with wolves, and the actual Santa Claus becoming a widowed boarder at your house.

These poems are filled with lonely, quirky people and some of them make you shake your head in confusion, and some of them you understand all too well:

I'm just like one of those lost geese I saw today, circling and circling in the sky, no longer remembering the original plan.

[GoldGato · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Tate is said to have been the Poet for Absurdists, which seems appropriate enough, based on this collection of poems. This is not your standard volume of rhyming poetry but ironic observations about empty airports, shrinking bank customers, and reincarnated dogs. It can leave you feeling a bit woozy and may cause you to look at that puzzling poem again, but you’ll find it hard to put the book away.

THE PROMOTION (abbreviated)
I was a dog in my former life, a very good
dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being.
I liked being a dog.
I had all the love any dog could hope for.
And then one morning I just didn’t get up.
They gave me a fine burial down
by the stream under a shade tree. That was the
end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so
I sit by the window and cry. I live in a high-rise
that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises.
At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak
to anyone all day. This is my reward for being
a good dog. The human wolves don’t even see me.
They fear me not.

I didn’t include the longer poem, so excuse my abbreviation, but this one was my favorite. The human wolves don’t even see me. What a different way to connect the loving relationship between a dog and its owner and then the way humans go through corporate life. The dog’s owner had been a farmer and was poor, but all were loved, especially the dog. Then the dog gets “promoted” into the modern human world and it just isn’t the same. I had to read this one a few times to get the connection, but it just hit the right buttons.

Tate’s poems are long (to me) but the last lines contain the twist, thus requiring reading all the way through. Again, it’s a bit different but they do seem to grow on the reader, in a Rod Serling fashion.

Book Season = Autumn (blind beggars)

[Eryk · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you’re going to read a James Tate book, you need to realize that you are entering a world of the fantastic. A surreal world where anything the mind can imagine, will, and does happen. A world where characters are capable of things not of this earth. It’s a dream state that touches on the absurd (in a marvelous way), but all the while, hints towards a reality that we, as the reader, are part of in our own lives. By the end of a poem, we’ve come to realize something greater about ourselves, our society, and our way of life. It’s truly an amazing talent that Tate has, and can only be appreciated when read. He is stunningly unique in his poetry form. Now, BEFORE you say, “Oh, forget it, I’m not the poetry type.” You have to trust me on this, okay?: It’s NOT what you think of when you think of the word “poetry.” I repeat: It’s NOT what you think of. This genre that Tate writes in is called prose poetry, and the poems themselves are called prose poems. Entire college courses have focused on the prose poem (which actually dates back to French poets of the 1800s), so I’ll just give you the 10 cent explanation: A prose poem is a poem without line breaks or stanzas, as one would normally come to expect from a poem. A prose poem borders and is sometimes indistinguishable from “flash fiction” or “micro-fiction.” Tate’s pieces read as short stories, and if you didn’t see the words “poems by James Tate” on the front cover, you would swear you were reading a collection of short stories. How a prose poem retains enough of the characteristics of poetry, considering it reads like fiction, is beyond this review. (I can offer suggestions for entire books and anthologies on prose poetry, if you are interested.) Suffice it to say, if you enjoy short, surreal stories with characters you’ll remember long after you close the book, then this is the one to read. There’s 109 poems (173 pages), each never exceeding 1 ½ pages, the perfect length to fit a couple in while waiting at the bank. (As a footnote, “flash fiction” has also been referred to as “smoke-long fiction,” since a poem or two can be read in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. This knowledge will get you nothing special, trust me!) Each poem is one continuous paragraph with no indents, and all dialogue is within the paragraph, in quotes. Tate utilizes the first-person present tense in every poem. And one of the coolest aspects of many of his pieces is that they end in the middle of the action and leave you saying, “WHAT?! WHAT?! Come on, James! What the hell are you doing? You can’t end it without letting me know what happens!” And that’s the magical part about James Tate: The reader is just as much a part of the meaning of the poem as the author is. Every person can and will have a different take on its meaning. I’ve read his books a second time and have derived a completely different interpretation of some of his pieces that I thought I figured out during the first reading. It’s a great genre for those who love fiction, but would really like to “try out” some poetry. Two of the other most popular poets who write in this genre are Russell Edson and Charles Simic. Happy reading!

[Patrick Duggan · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Tate suffers from a crucial problem I myself would kill to have: he's prolific and has published many, many books. Having said that, across his many books, both poetry and prose, he tends to write within the same theme and voice, with the same consistent poetic choices. James Tate suffers from a crucial problem that almost all of us do: he has a comfort zone.

That in and of itself isn't a bad thing per say. At his best, these factors meet in crescendo, creating fresh and inspiring verse. At his most comfortable he comes as off as someone else writing their version of a James Tate poem. Tateiness, you might say, is what ruins Tate's latest volume of poetry. The wonderful Russell Edsonness of the first poem quickly dissipates in a sigh of the same tricks and Tate as you turn the page.

If not for Tate, Edson, Simic, and Knott, the "Boston Surrealists" like I like to say, many folks like myself may never have gotten into poetry. Prose poetry's knack is weighed to its content, but in this book Tate seems to heavy-handedly suggest a meaning larger than the small worlds and moments his characters occupy. He does this mostly in the last lines from poem to poem, leaving us a bit forced into conclusion, or the purposeful absence of one.

In this absence, we tend to search. In this day and age, we've come to expect every poet to be working out an intellectual project in his or her book, a "wire monkey" as Brian Teare often said to me. It reads like a Spoon River Anthology in disparate verse, each poem is an interesting through dimensionless new person and place, though that is just my personal projection.

This book is about 1/3rd too long, not necessarily poem wise but word and line wise. Tate's imagination is as odd and amazing as ever, but his editorial choices and eye are the largest question. It's a shame that a smattering of mediocre poems skews the bell curve for the small smattering of brilliant poems. It's worth flipping though, but for Tate at his best pick up Worshipful Company of Fletchers or The Lost Pilot.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This man is hilarious. I saw him read from this book and Memoirs of a Hawk several years ago, and he had the whole crowd in stitches... he would be reading, everyone would be laughing, and he would just dryly look up at the crowd.... priceless.

[Ocean · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book inspired me to read aloud to any and all interested friends i came across while carrying this book in my bag, if only to let them in to the extremely strange, compact, yet lush & full worlds that james tate creates. every single poem is a little window into a very odd world. my fave was "of whom am i afraid?", in which a yuppie-ish guy goes to a feed store and casually asks a farmer if he's ever read the work of emily dickinson. the farmer says something like, "of course. she's a real pistol!" and then tells the story of how he got into a big fight about it with his neighbor. of course, that summation does not do the poem justice--it's clever, funny, wistful and just fuckin' perfect. not all the poems in here work like that, some are very skippable, but this made me remember why i used to love poetry so damn much.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few lines in to any James Tate poem, I think: Anybody could write this. And at the end of every James Tate poem, I think: I wish I wrote that.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my entire outlook on the possibilities of poetry.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are hilarious and oddly heart-felt. Tate continues to reinvent the genre, pulling out ironies that are deceptively simple and always dead-on accurate.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tate is full of the unexpected...

[sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late 90s and early aughts, Tate transitioned away from the surreal, associative, and half-narrative, half-lyrical poems that he had first made a name for himself with and into his late-career style. This book, and the one before it (Memoir of the Hawk) epitomize that later style: the line breaks seem hardly to matter anymore—these are prose poems, fully, practically flash fiction—and every piece has characters and (more often than not) dialogue. They're still strange and still funny, still decidedly Jim Tate poems, but he's found a new comfort zone to slip into. Emphasis on "comfort zone"—you could well accuse him of being same-y, and some of the pieces here are a little overlong, but when he hits he hits. The little poetic windows into his mundane, absurdist worlds are best read slowly, and just two or three at a time. Return to the City of White Donkeys is like if Russell Edson wrote with the form and length of, say, Kenneth Koch.

For my money, his earlier style is better, but he rarely misses.

BEING PRESENT AT MORE THAN ONE PLACE AT A TIME

I took a step and looked around. No one
was looking, so I took another step. I glanced
at the ground, looked up at the sky. Everything
seemed to be in order, so I took another step,
this one almost a hop. A woman walks up to me
and says, "That was cute." "Thanks," I say,
"watch this," and I leap high into the air.
"That's overdoing things," she says. I hang
my head, ashamed of myself. I stand there for
half an hour, not moving, barely breathing.
A cop comes up and says, "You're loitering."
"I'm not loitering," I say "I'm repositioning
myself. I'm adjusting to the currents."
"My mistake," he says. "You had the appearance
of a loiterer. "It's the fog," I said.
When he was gone, I took a step and looked
around. I could see a vast, golden city on
the horizon. No, it's only the fog, I thought,
and jumped backward, surprising myself.

[Jerry Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personally I found it easier to approach of this set of prose poems more as a group 1-2 page ministories.

Usually when I read poems that lean into the absurd, I get lost from a lack of substance to connect with or follow through. And I just end up scanning the pages for cool phrases or imagery here and there.

However, the ones in this book are quite compelling all the way through. It feels like passing through a lucid dream where you know something is wrong but can't quite put your finger on it. It's not just absurdity for the sake of absurdity, or non sequiturs just because it's cool. There is humour (I LOL'd a few times), there is terror, there is sincerity and affection. The absurdity is there to serve those emotions and bring them out.

That's just to say I really enjoyed these poems and it showed me a new side of writing I hadn't seen before.

[Jenshaines · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been looking at a variety of Tate's prose poem books. The later books I studied - The Government Lake and Dome of the Hidden Pavilion focus both on potential end of life experiences and the follies of government, police, our world, war, etc. These are also themes he visits in this collection, but there is more urgency and maybe a sharper edge in a larger percentage of the poems in the other two books. All of the books I've been working with I'm counting as finished today (because I did final work with them today) and this is not a "review" as much as notes for myself in terms of my reading so I can come back and work with these again as I need to.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no idea! These poems are the inside parts of story! They are the characters and the problems and the dialog and the infinite small and big parts of life. These poems open all the doors -- especially the one that says, YES you can write like this! (I have been and now I can continue!) I read this slowly because it takes a really long time to read so many poems each one of which contains a world, but also because I never wanted it to end.

Thank you, Mikko, for the recommendation.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tate is a consummate expert at making the mundane and the otherworldly collide and haunt one another in hilarious ways. I gasped and/or laughed out loud at so many of these strange vignettes of a rural or suburban America permeated by ghosts, wild animals and other surreal encounters. Through it all Tate attempts to uncover the mechanisms by which we end up believing the myths, lies, and other stories we tell ourselves in our search for meaning.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

to review

[edmondegreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishingly beautiful. Just perfect. Sheer genius.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Favorites: The Special Guest, Return to the City of White Donkeys, Bringing in the New Year, The Nameless Ones, The Vacant Jungle, The Search for Lost Lives

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for Holy Saturday and Long Term
Memory
By James Tate

[John Wojtowicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

So strange. So weird. So glad for the day James Tate found a pencil tucked in his tin foil hat.

[jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don’t usually rate books or movies or anything, but that’s my goat right there

[Kaylee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t get me wrong i’d die for him

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Return to the City of White Donkeys” by James Tate. HarperCollins, New York, 2004.

Though James Tate’s “Return to the City of White Donkeys” might seem like a random conglomeration of silly poetry to some, others may be able to find meanings behind the poems that reflect issues in our society today. This is what I uncovered, and is one of the main reasons why I appreciated the book so much.

Tate’s poems are distributed throughout the book in a random order, so that essentially you could open the book to any page near the middle or end, read a poem, and not miss out on anything on earlier pages. There are over fifty poems within, ranging in length from a page, to two pages. The poems all share a few things in common; they involve a bizarre situation, often including a character who reacts to it in a strange way, and sometimes the ending doesn’t seem to make sense at all. But miraculously, somehow these poems reflect reality.

This is certainly one of Tate’s strongest points; having a situation that appears to makes no sense literally, yet if you look at it from the right perspective, it figuratively speaks volumes. For example, the poem titled, “The All but Perfect Evening on the Lake” begins by describing a couple that has retreated to a beautiful lake for the weekend. They’re enjoying some wine together when they hear a knock at the door. It’s a ranger, who tells them that they’re under arrest for “too much happiness.” The man asks the ranger if it’s a joke, and he pulls out a book, researching whether it is or not. He reports to them that it is indeed a joke, but he can’t determine which kind. He then bids them goodnight and leaves. Though I first chuckled after reading this, it dawned on me that this was an exaggeration of what occurs here in America. People get penalized for enjoying themselves, and the ones who penalize don’t even understand why themselves.

On another note, I also believe that some of the poems are simply there to entertain. Tate’s poem “Memories of Fish” describes a man in an aquarium who amuses himself by talking to fish. He then eats a tuna fish sandwich, and afterwards feels bad about it, claiming that “there can be no forgiveness”. This is another thing to commend; Tate sets up his poems so that reader’s don’t expect the ending, making it all the more enjoyable. In the poem “The Man Without Leather Breeches”, the speaker is going grocery shopping, and primarily mentions his opinions on the man shopping in front of him. The poem sets itself up to go in a completely different direction, but in the end, the speaker claims that while getting lost in this thoughts, he had forgotten what he came for, and everyone was looking at him as if he were naked. He then ends by saying that this was literally the case.

Tate’s poetry is one of a kind, chockfull of symbolism, irony and humor. But it’s much more than something to read casually and giggle at; if reader’s take time to admire the craft and the meaning behind the work, this could claim its place as a classic to many.

[Peter Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right from the start the reader is immersed in environment where realism and plausibility take a back seat to the fantastic and the absurd. All of the poems in the collection have that distinctive narrative bent that Tate has so finely tuned throughout the years--appearing frequently in his earlier collections: Distance From Loved Ones, Memoir of The Hawk, Shroud of Gnome, Worshipful Company of Fletchers. But this collection seems to place even greater importance on a myth-making. In “Long Term Memory” the narrator finds himself having to come to terms with a statue of himself erected in a park. These narratives are nothing short of modern mythology, and could easily find their place on equal grounds with works from American Indian, Pacific and European mythologies. Mythologies throughout history have often attempted to give meaning to inexplicable phenomenon through the use of the fantastic and this collection is no different. One poem reads like a modern version of the Myth of Narcissus--but in this instance the speaker himself is thrust--forced--into dealing with his own narcissism even though he has not recollection of ever having been responsible. A brilliant book. Will surely remain one the great classics in the literary canon.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Tate's style consisted of practiced, easy idiosyncrasies that read akin to the narrative of a dream. His stream of conscious style paired with light wit is unique, although it does invoke poets like Kenneth Koch. To some, this may be like eating kimchi, to those who have no cultivated a taste for these particularly humorous bits of surrealism, it may go down like spiced, half-rotted cabbage. For those who have developed a taste for Tate's particular vision, it would be something one could eat with every meal. Although that metaphor can have one miss Tate's prime talent, the ability to build a tension that releases in humor or a subtly bitter sweet crescendo.

This book has the feel, though, that Tate has perhaps turned his process into a nearly mechanical procedure, as Randall Jarrel said about late Auden in an entirely different context, though Tate's long lines and prosaic turns, while not quite exactly prose, may be best seen in his earlier works. This book is still not one to skip despite the fact fans of Tate may have seen it before and partisans of Tate may be coming to it with the taste of consistency that a good and unique craftsman can render, but one that sells his earlier brilliance a little short.

[Kathleen]

The food writer who won the pulitzer last year talked about going to a restaurant multiple times to eat chou dofu, not because he liked it, but because he wanted to understand the aesthetic. I tried to take that approach to this book, but found it similarly stinky and monotonous. I think I get what Tate is going for: his prosaic poems are slightly bizarre and force the reader to think differently both about the regular world and poetry itself. Tate's is a landscape filed with named narrators who speak in similar voices (which remind me of nothing so much as that sesame street piece where "we all sing in the same voice / the same song / the same voice/ we all sing in the same voice / and we sing in harmony") to describe and finally resign themselves to the strangeness in the world around them. Like eating chou dofu, there is an initial cringe, a bite into a new texture, and a final resignation that this dish is just as stinky as the last time you tried it. And you know it will be the next.

[Books and the Bronx Gurrrrlll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love love love!! My first foray into the poetry genre in about ten years. This was a great way to slide back into it. These poems are so wonderful, funny, ironic, clever and fanciful that I just breezed through. I love the format they're written in: like tiny novellas. Each one is different but written in the same tongue-in-cheek style. Sometimes they are just funny, but sometimes you can feel the weight of them sadly pointing something out, reminding one of something forgotten.

Some of my favorite of the poems were: Beavertown, Lovechild, The Formal Invitation (loved this one!), and Not Long Ago, Milk Cows Ruminated There.

james Tate is a Pulitzer Prize winning author, but that didn't mean I was going to like his work. In this case I can completely understand why he won that award. Poetry can be intimidating but this is the opposite of that. I will definitely be reading more poetry!

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was incredibly hesitant to read this 173 page collection of prose poetry. I don't understand the difference between prose poetry and flash fiction. But Kelle and Lisa gave me no choice in the matter. I'm glad that they held me at gun point and forced me to read this. Not only do I have a better understanding between the prose poem (more surreal) and flash fiction (more narrative), I've even tried writing a few prose poems in a James Tate kinda of fashion. The verdict is still out on how "good" these poems of mine actually are. But Tate is amazing. I felt that I was transported into a different time and location in each poem. I got swept up in the moment. That's why it's taken me almost 2 months to read this collection (I paid full price for it at AWP so I feel I got my money's worth), you can't just race through the poems. They won't let you. The poems invest you.

[Christina M Rau · Rating 1 out of 5]

This Tate collection made me sad. Not because the poetry is sad. But because the poetry was lacking in poetic form and was borderline vignettes of oddities. The inside blurb touts poems by Tate in his signature style. Yet this style does not reflect a lot of the poems I read in previous collections like The Lost Pilot and Absences and The Oblivion Ha Ha. Perhaps this signature developed after those or between those. MAYBE it's not signature at all. I wound up skipping almost all the poems, skimming here and there, and finding maybe two poems I like, only one of which I remember. It's about riding a camel.

[Kasandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book deserves 5 stars not only because it is -- literally -- "amazing" (surreal, bizarre), but also because it's hilariously funny. I can't remember the last time I shoved a book of poetry under somebody's face so often and said "you have to read this". These poems are by turns unexpected, inventive, silly, funny, chilling, original, odd, deadpan, and really addictive -- I not only couldn't put this book down, I read it again immediately after the first read, just to enjoy it. A definite keeper. Some reviews here have said this isn't Tate's best work, but since this was my introduction to him, I will have to find more to see if I agree; I totally enjoyed this.