A Hint to Lucretius

Donald Revell

The afterlife is an austere beast,
Fabulous but austere.
The most desired is charioteer
To the broken alto of the least,

Hobbled by aftermath but still
Beautiful, still with one bauble
Of scar upon her lip. Trouble
My mouth with your mouth. Fill

The rampant measures as Campion did.
Tabard is hue, and thyme is terrace.
My mother’s name was Doris,
A Greek unknown to her. Hidden

Among the wild herbs in their patterns
Are first things, and first things never die.
To them, the afterlife is a memory.
When I was born, there were lanterns

Strung upon eyebeams to the horizon.
Nothing afterwards stretched so far.
Upon the early mind, there are
Two loves, each a white campion

 
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Donal Revell

Donald Revell is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, most recently of The English Boat (2018) and Drought-Adapted Vine (2015), both from Alice James Books. His newest collection, White Campion, is due in May of 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: Essays;  Essay: 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.

Farmington, Maine

"For Revell, love is a large kingdom, and White Campion dazzles and aches as it commemorates the trembling balance from which the original heart of these poems beats, memory. And though we can’t regain the innocence of the past, memory is a way to re-enter the Paradise of our youth. Within it, advent and farewell are ceremoniously present. We are tied together thus. These poems are ecstatic in their relentless reverence of this dear world and ever-chastened by a lingering melancholy for what gets 'wiped away.' Praised be the poetry of Donald Revell!”
—Pam Rehm

“Donald Revell speaks with angels and martyrs and us. Yet poems of this world are the revelations of White Campion. With exuberant efficiency they swerve amidst the dangers and despairs of the contemporary moment, its outages and outrages, to show what it is to love people and places and dogs and the exotica of thought. Fully aware of the reasons to feel abandoned, yet it is a book about the constant possibility, even the threat, of love. The off-handed spirituality of this poet—and the astringent beauty of his language—is among our remaining excuses for hope.”
—Bin Ramke, author of Light Wind Light Light

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