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Spirit Engine

By (author): John Donlan

John Donlan’s lyric work seeks the connection between lives—not just the life of a coyote and the life of a man, or the peaceful cacophony of a pond in summer and the life of the human listener—but between the life before birth, and the life after. He reveals the wilderness to us moment by moment, while simultaneously driving us back into our own nature—a process readers, lifted by Donlan’s imagery, rhythms, and insights, can only experience as pure pleasure. Here beauty is the engine that enspirits the mind, freeing us from contemporary despair and the illusion we’ve left nature behind. Devil’s Paintbrush. In my slow-burning archive orange hawkweed thrives in granite-charactered soil spalled off the basement stone, a beaver labours up her steep skid road logging poplar for food and shelter, wind drives rivers of ripples down a pond. Everything here knows what to do. I investigate every valve, work and rework notes to husks, skeletal remains, survivors who revive experience. I try to memorize, to make some pictures to walk into, in the final time when I can’t walk or hear or see, and see lake-cradling pink granite, its orange earth, its skin of lives flickering, flickering.

AUTHOR

John Donlan

A native of Baysville, in Ontario’s Muskoka region, John Donlan has previously published two highly acclaimed poetry collections: Domestic Economy (Brick, 1990, repr. 1997) and Baysville (Anansi, 1993). He is a reference librarian with the Vancouver Public Library and a poetry editor with Brick Books. He has won numerous awards, with his poems and reviews appearing in leading journals in Canada and the USA.


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John Donlan’s lyric work seeks the connection between lives—not just the life of a coyote and the life of a man, or the peaceful cacophony of a pond in summer and the life of the human listener—but between the life before birth, and the life after. He reveals the wilderness to us moment by moment, while simultaneously driving us back into our own nature—a process readers, lifted by Donlan’s imagery, rhythms, and insights, can only experience as pure pleasure. Here beauty is the engine that enspirits the mind, freeing us from contemporary despair and the illusion we’ve left nature behind. Devil’s Paintbrush. In my slow-burning archive orange hawkweed thrives in granite-charactered soil spalled off the basement stone, a beaver labours up her steep skid road logging poplar for food and shelter, wind drives rivers of ripples down a pond. Everything here knows what to do. I investigate every valve, work and rework notes to husks, skeletal remains, survivors who revive experience. I try to memorize, to make some pictures to walk into, in the final time when I can’t walk or hear or see, and see lake-cradling pink granite, its orange earth, its skin of lives flickering, flickering.John Donlan’s lyric work seeks the connection between lives—not just the life of a coyote and the life of a man, or the peaceful cacophony of a pond in summer and the life of the human listener—but between the life before birth, and the life after. He reveals the wilderness to us moment by moment, while simultaneously driving us back into our own nature—a process readers, lifted by Donlan’s imagery, rhythms, and insights, can only experience as pure pleasure. Here beauty is the engine that enspirits the mind, freeing us from contemporary despair and the illusion we’ve left nature behind. Devil’s Paintbrush. In my slow-burning archive orange hawkweed thrives in granite-charactered soil spalled off the basement stone, a beaver labours up her steep skid road logging poplar for food and shelter, wind drives rivers of ripples down a pond. Everything here knows what to do. I investigate every valve, work and rework notes to husks, skeletal remains, survivors who revive experience. I try to memorize, to make some pictures to walk into, in the final time when I can’t walk or hear or see, and see lake-cradling pink granite, its orange earth, its skin of lives flickering, flickering.

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Details

Dimensions:

Pages

Published:

January 01, 2008

City of Publication:

London

Country of Publication:

CA

Publisher:

Brick Books

ISBN:

9781894078634

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Animals & Nature

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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