"Poems as they should be written--impatiently, impassionedly, intelligently, impertinently. Our daily language remade by a revered craftsman into quick images and sharp-tongued speech against harmful pretenses and imperial cruelty. Work by a line master. A book pervaded by a longing for freedom and the brave, bold talent of a man of everyday action. In a word, the smartest, most urgent, most actual poetry we have."--F. D. Reeve
"James Scully's splendid new book, Donatello's Version, is a social poetry which arises not from opinionation and facile protest, but from clear-eyed witness, hope, and saeva indignatio. His art is impatient of art, yet handsomely honed and phrased; it demands that we see and face injustice, and it assails--often through mockery--our compromises and complicities. Of many strong poems in this collection, I think that 'Babble' is a work of exceptional power."--Richard Wilbur
"Scully writes with a deceptive and unemotional simplicity about the everyday horrors of our time...[Donatello's Version] is a book about war—World War II, the war on terror, war in Palestine, the new imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His fables about imperial over-reaching, 'Untitled,' 'Neo Manifesto,' 'Star Chamber,' 'The Donkeys' and 'The Lesser Evil,' are stunning."—Morning Star, Great Britain
"A rare poet, [Scully] is one of few addressing the current Iraq war and torture Recommended for larger public libraries and all academic libraries."—Library Journal
"This is, above all, an important book, a powerful book, a gleam of lyrical light in the dark tunnel of our current social practice. It is also moving, eloquent, tough—enfolding in startling and starkly original metaphors the moving force and commitment of its author...in their coherence of poetic, politics and philosophy, these books make the best kind of reading. They show us ourselves; they make us think, and cringe, and grow; and they give us the pleasure of their lyric power and intelligent, fierce grace."--Small Press Review
Adrienne Rich notes in her introduction to James Scully's classic study, Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice, that Scully's essays and poems "refuse to soothe or simplify, to shortchange either poetry or the imperative for social revolution. His fiercely demystifying intelligence is grounded in hope and realism for poetry in itself along with other forms of dissident engagement."
Written as the War on Terror morphed into an Imperial War, Donatello’s Version carries on the Public Poetry tradition of such writers as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Horace, Juvenal, Dante, Milton, and Blake. These poems arise from the premise that words matter, that the res publica (the human value that individuals in a community place above their own self interest) also matters, and that the voice of the poet can make a difference.
Most current poetry tends to slide off 'what is.' Consequently the significance of 9-11, which inaugurated a geopolitical power grab that includes Constitutional government itself, has been met with poetic silence. In Donatello's Version post 9-11 reality is re-viewed through Hamlet, Donatello's David, Lazarus and Coltrane. The world is one of Wild Trees, the ultimate Star Chamber of Abu Ghraib, Strange Words, screaming Donkeys, Scleroderma, Gitmo and Babble . . . where the cultural and moral infrastructure of civic life is, as it has long been, broken. Collective values have to be reconstituted, but on what bases? Nothing can be taken for granted. This is a poetry of questions, impasses and revelations rather than answers.
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