Vellum（ISBN=） 英文原版

　　Ornate elements from European art and bruised blue-collar
lives from middle America (Toledo, New Mexico, Trenton, and
elsewhere) form the poles around which Donovan’s lyrical debut
revolves. “There’s something to be said for the pattern ruin
makes,” he explains, and his own patterns combine ruin and splendor
in the manner of great mosaics, with dozens of noun phrases, lists,
memorable names of things, adjacent and conjoined in his long
unrhymed lines. “A Blues About Wanting in the End” finds, in a tree
destroyed by beetles, all manner of elegy and suffering: “the wood
honeycombed, scar-sprawled & furrowed;/ the tangle of channels
where the larvae have hatched.” “An East Toledo Map of Ash”
includes “pastel plastic hangers,// cans, a punctured hose, a
framed sketch of orchids streaming from black grass,// black bags
cinched with twine.” Another poem begins with an epigraph from a
medieval historian, and ends in northern New Mexico, where the poet
lives now, and where he finds sources of “joy: knitted V-neck
cardigans; coyote fence posts// looped with wire; a pair of work
boots snared in the telephone lines.” Chosen for publication by
Mark Doty (who contributes a foreword), Donovan’s detail-packed,
even bejeweled poems resemble, in spots, those of Amy Clampitt and
Albert Goldbarth. Though Donovan’s odes may not find the formal
complexities of the former, nor the comic variety of the latter,
the sheer vigor of his noticings could make him a poet to watch.
–(Publishers Weekly )

　　Vellum, the exquisite debut collection from Matt Donovan,
meditates on beauty, art, and the violence that is sometimes
inherent in both. Here, he juxtaposes religious iconography with
stories from history, biography, and personal narrative. In the
poignant Saint Catherine in an O, a knife bears unlikely dualityan
object stirring with danger and grace. A man plays slide guitar /
with his pocketknife, accompanying the words of his songs/ one
about light, the Lord moving on water . . . / how blood, he knows,
will make him whole. In other poems, he reflects upon master
artists, who captured similar themes in their art though in
different mediums. Brimming with poems that are quietly powerful,
Vellum marks the arrival of a commanding new voice.

　　Matt Donovan is the winner of the 2006 Katherine Bakeless
Nason Prize for poetry, selected by Mark Doty and awarded by
Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
Donovan’s poems have appeared in several journals, including
Poetry, Agni, the Gettysburg Review, and the Kenyon Review. He
received his MFA from New York University and in 2004 was awarded a
literature fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. He
is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the
College of Santa Fe and lives in New Mexico with his wife and
son.

Foreword ix
Part I Pulling Down the Sky
　Saint Catherine in an O: A Song About Knives
　Montezumas Painters
　Small Blessing for a Child
　Fumbling with a Field Guide on the Back Arroyo Trail
　Charlie Chaplin Dug Up Ransomed: A Prayer
　Second Pilgrimage, Rodeo Nites
　Line
　Those Two Sketches by Severn in Italy
Part II A Partial Invocation of Our Days
　Night Train: A Listeners Guide
　The Keeper of Hands
　Portrait of the Whirlwind in Job as a Passenger Pigeon Flock
　The Scabbard of Limbs Means Flesh
　An East Toledo Map of Ash
　Thumb Trick
　Licking the El Greco
　A Blues About Wanting in the End
　What I Mean When I Say Blossom
Part III Shapes of Stone Prayer
　Trenton, a Solmization, Two Rivers, a Few Tells
　Patio Lull with House Guest View
　Swallowed Things
　To a Student Who Refuses to Read More of The Inferno After
Learning None of It Is True
　A Damaged Fresco of The Massacre of the Innocents
　Audubon Diptych
　Towards the Sound of a Heron Stepping on Ice
Notes
Acknowledgments