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A Thief Of Strings - Poems by Donald Revell

In his latest collection, Revell has crafted poems spanning styles and modes, encompassing within his verse a country in wartime which is willfully unconscious to it. A Thief Of Strings is part eulogy, part peace march, part prayer to a heaven perhaps unwilling or unable to help. Through abstraction he weaves a poetry more concrete and comfortable with its era, using break and line as punctuation and interjecting outside voice without breaking a stride.

Revell owes his line in part to Creeley, whom he writes for in homage within the center of the manuscript, then concludes the collection in a voice and line all his own, using repetition and collage to show language as music within a very American poetics. A Thief Of Strings is a search for peace in a time which cannot separate itself from war. The omnipresence of violence and vulgarity is barely recognized and needs a new language within to define itself. Revell attempts to give voice to that language.

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