Guesswork

Winner, City of Hamilton Arts Award, Established Artist, Writing

Beginning with an autobiographical account of the mind, Jeffery Donaldson’s marvellous new collection moves from personal history to national history, concluding with “Province House,” where the ghost of Sir John A. Macdonald has the last word on metaphor.

In his fourth collection, Donaldson moves deftly between the incisive short lyric and the extended meditation, oscillating between detachment and engagement. In “Torso,” Donaldson considers the headless sculpture of Apollo, both chiselled rock and the changeling child of multiple observers. In a series of poems written from the vantage point of a hockey puck, the elements of a hockey game — the face-off, defensemen, play-by-play, referee, linesmen, clock, and net minder — twist in the fascinating funhouse mirror in the depths of Donaldson’s personal Platonic cave.

Donaldson’s poems reveal a mind at once conversant with the literary deities and the subtleties of the everyday. Profoundly graceful in its recognition of the poetic heritage of others, Guesswork confirms that Donaldson is a poet whose craftsmanship, whose supple syntax and unerring sense of rhythm, are anything but guesswork.

AUTHOR

Jeffery Donaldson

Jeffery Donaldson is the author of several collections of poetry including Granted: Poems of Metaphor (Fall 2022). Palilalia was nominated for the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry in 2008 and a prose work, Viaticum: From Notebooks, received the Hamilton Arts Council Award for non-fiction in 2021. Donaldson teaches poetry and poetics at McMaster University. He lives in Hamilton.

Reviews

In this splendid new collection, Jeffery Donaldson shifts deftly between the incisive short lyric and the extended meditation, oscillating between detachment and engagement. In “Torso,” the headless sculpture of Apollo is both chiselled rock and the changeling child of multiple observers. In “Enter, PUCK,” elements of a hockey game twist in the fascinating funhouse mirror that lines the depths of Donaldson’s personal Platonic cave.

Revealing a mind at once conversant with literary deities and the subtleties of the everyday, Guesswork confirms that exacting craftsmanship, supple syntax, and an unerring sense of rhythm are everything but guesswork.

“From the opening lines of the first poem… you know you’re in good hands — the hands of a poet who knows his craft… There’s no guesswork involved; Donaldson’s unerring artistry keeps this collection form the unwarranted end that every book lover fears: ‘An unread book / is like a tree / falling / in an empty forest.’ “
– Telegraph Journal

“Guesswork‘s hockey poems suggest a tense symphony of movement, speed, and grace punctuated by a lingering violence, a mind on sharpest edge. All jersey-bundled, they nearly obscure a muscular attention to form, technique, and craft that flexes and strains just beneath metaphor’s protective veneer.”
“Whether riffing on Rilke’s Apollo, addressing an unlikely twin, or recalling a local magician, Donaldson writes with imaginative flare, ever-allusive language, and rare rhythmical skill. How lucky we are to witness the arrival of such poetry.”