Timothy Donnelly's poems have already garnered a following in some of
America's best literary journals (The Paris Review, Ploughshares), and
the long-awaited publication of his first collection of poetry will make
a spectacular new addition to the Grove Press Poetry Series. Donnelly
seduces the reader with his ability to summon up just about any topic,
sensibility, or thought, with the self-assurance and effortlessness of a
skilled master. The title poem is a brilliant expose of an imaginary
play that is an allegorical rendering of a single lifetime. Donnelly
imagines a stage and populates it with objects that emerge as pictorial
and poetic anchors punctuating the enveloping verse. As the poem
craftily weaves around these, its energy builds up to a climax that is
both a luminous poetic offering and an amatory overture at the reader.
In Accidental Species, he puts forth a remarkable statement about his
own efforts as a poet, a humorous ars poetica (If I only had a crutch I
wouldn't wobble / half so much) by way of a heartbreaking lover's
complaint (The terror I inspired I am made to feel). Acclaimed by
Richard Howard as brilliant and masterful, Timothy Donnelly's premiere
work combines an extraordinary gift for rhetorical exuberance and
syntactical intricacy with a stunning poetic maturity. For its
thoughtfulness and range, for the sheer energy of its rhetoric, and for
the audacity of its poetic acumen, Twenty-Seven Props for a Production
of Eine Lebenszeit is a remarkable debut collection from one of our most
outstanding and original young poets.
