Donald Revell

Pitty-Pat
August 15, 2011 Revell Donald

Pitty-Pat

 

Oleander to the death of horses
Odilon Redon was mother’s martyr
Ruined no mounted with true love but askew

How it is these sounds reach back in time
A first beloved smelling of milk and tar
In time to find first poets grassy

Churning the ice cream blossoming
Philosopher it makes sense it screams
Joy beloved joy and bees in the bedrooms

These sounds reach back in time I feel like an Indian
Like cut grass blown against the base of a mountain
I cannot share a dream we die alone

Born into such beautiful company
Foals find grass earth’s countless eyes

Donald Revell is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, most recently of Canandaigua (2024) and White Campion (2021). Revell has also published six volumes of translations from the French, including Apollinaire’s Alcools, Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, Laforgue’s Last Verses, and Verlaine’s Songs without Words. His critical writings have been collected as: Sudden Eden: EssaysEssay: A Critical Memoir; The Art of Attention; and Invisible Green: Selected Prose. Winner of the PEN USA Translation Award and two-time winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry, he has also won the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize and is a former Fellow of the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations. Additionally, he has twice been awarded Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Having previously taught at the Universities of Alabama, Denver, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah, Donald Revell is now Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.