New Releases by David Donnell

In this collection of poetry, Donnell examines his past and childhood memories in narrative confessions. The poems offer perspectives about city life, including the stresses and ironic staples of urban living.

An eclectic collection of poetry and fiction, Dancing in the Dark tackles themes of music, culture, philosophy, love, literature, and beauty. In a series of pieces that are deeply personal though not autobiographical, Donnell evokes both high and low culture, in one moment recognizing the impossibility of desire, but acknowledging his work’s connection to “The Boss,” Bruce Springsteen, in another. He evokes music and the objects of everyday life with clarity and grace.

Winner of the Governor General’s Award, this collection of Donnell’s best poetry pulses with the realities of home, street, and working life. His ironic wit and lyrical passages make for a fantastic read complete with his signature deadpan style and post-modern sophistication. “Making it in the City,” “Lakes,” and “The True Story of Pat Garrett” are but a few of the titles included in this eclectic compilation.

Winner of the City of Toronto Book Award, China Blues explores the urban pastoral through poetry and fiction. Donnell''s protagonist wanders Toronto, recalling his small-town Ontario boyhood and commenting on a range of contrasting subjects, from pop culture to war.

Long admired for his books of poetry, most recently China Blues and Dancing in the Dark, David Donnell’s poems continue to surprise and amaze us with their cool jazz of spontaneity and imaginative logic. A sensual and intellectual feast, Sometimes a Great Notion is a deconstruction of the contemporary artist’s life; it’s also a tough, compassionate look at the future of the future and our philosophy of love. Culinary adventures and geography juxtapose with Japanese culture, erotic interludes are interrupted by notes on Alex Colville, giving us the clearest picture of convergence theory we’ve had since Marshall McLuhan was a young man. Here, in poems like “Luce” or “Pillows,” Donnell pushes the boundaries of minimalism in original and subtle ways and succeeds like peach ice cream on a hot day. Moment after moment, this is a provocative and refreshing book.

Angels are aliens in spaceships. Angels descend and eagles soar. I am not an eagle. If I were an angel I would descend and give you of the bread of happiness the salt of anger & the message you already know better than I know: the moon & the lakes & the hills are forever. The much - anticipated Watermelon Kindness, David Donnell''s first new collection in six years, comes from a part of the country that''s somewhere between Archie Bunker and Dale Peck - a contentious, but genial place. With more range than any other contemporary poet, Donnell ponders questions of art, history, and psychology while reveling in the sensory and all that makes us real. Whether exploring the modus operandi of other writers or paralleling the trajectory of a satellite with everyday occurrences like lost money, badly ended love affairs, or political disappointment, Watermelon Kindness is the Roman padda, a tough individual loaf approximately the size of your hand. Always concerned with what''s most nourishing - why we''re as crazy as we are crazy - it''s forty percent crust, because crust is almost always the best of it.