Donald Revell

UBI AMOR IBI OCULUS EST
August 21, 2019 Revell Donald

UBI AMOR IBI OCULUS EST
 
“No one is on your side. What will you do?”—Fleur Adcock

 
Flumes of the late night
21st-century Tzigane
In the tall desert wrong
Even after rain. The white
Asphalt gleams. The car radio
Insists upon race anger
Keen as weather and warfare
But with a heaven to get to,
A shock of empty meadow.
 
The essential of myself is out there
Walking, aimlessly. Meanwhile,
I drive slowly, keeping the spectral
Gypsy flumes fixed in the mirrors.
A scroll of high sound, suddenly,
Like outrage out of nowhere,
Like God in the beginning, from nowhere,
Breaks into the car. I can see
The mirrors blackened and the radio empty.

Donald Revell is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, most recently of White Campion (2021) and The English Boat (2018), both from Alice James Books. 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 currently a Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.