I've lost track (again) of this series of posts, but this must be #30-something. I want to draw attention, again, to the poetry of
Joseph Donahue which is deeply and explicitly in sympathy with Corbin's visionary work throughout, and to announce the publication of the next volume of his long poem:
Dissolves, Terra Lucida IV-VIII, from
Talisman House. I remind readers to read
Peter O'Leary's fascinating appreciation of Pam Rehm and Joseph Donahue in the
Chicago Review :
Apocalypticism - A Way Forward for Poetry. (pdf), and these reviews of the first volume of
Terra Lucida by
Robert Baird and
John Olson. Also indispensable in our context are
Donahue's review of
Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds by Seyhan Erözçelik translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, Talisman House, 2010 and
his review of Nathaniel Tarn's
Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers, New Directions, 2008. Donahue's poetry seems to me of exquisite and breathtaking intensity.
“If one thing characterizes the active imagination Donahue brings
to bear on his poem, it’s his desire that the visionary reality he has
entered not be merely some dream, but a place of absolute reality. His
skill at conveying this feeling seems unmatched by any other living
American poet, such that parts of his poem exhibit a simultaneous
lightness of touch and gravitational pull, where surrealistic follies
vie with imaginal intensities.” —Peter O’Leary
“This is an
episode of high romance and mystical compassion within Joseph Donahue’s
on-going long poem — with the intertwining of love of the luminous
earth, the erotic transformations of muse-love, and the maternal gift —
the love of vocation and of the prophetic name of the poet all unrolling
in an elaborated strand of meditation. The work has medieval motifs
(like those of Duncan or of H.D.) reanimated in our time: forbidden
lovers, lyric folds inside songs of three cultures (Christian, Jewish,
Muslim), the garden, the shock of desire, the shock of sci-ence that
extends mystery, the shock of death and transfiguration, all compelling
in their endless aftermath. This is a book of continuous yearning, a
book of cosmic creation, a book of spiritual meditation all saturated by
Donahue’s angelic ear and eye.” —Rachel Blau DuPlessis
“Picasso said that whenever he painted there might not be an object, but
there was the fragrance of an object. In Dissolves, Joseph Donahue
combines some-thing like an object with something like a fragrance. His
cubism, unglazed and personal, produces magical other dimensions.”
—David Shapiro
"Together
the Freer and Sackler house one of the world's most remarkable
collections, which offers invaluable insight into the lives of the
powerful of the period," said Julian Raby, the Dame Jillian Sackler
Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art. 
