The English Boat

"More than any poet I know, Donald Revell makes the act of writing and the act of being alive feel identical: his poems are transparent, utterly before us, and yet infinitely receding, beckoning from beyond. His ear is impeccable, and his clear-eyed vision of our fate would be harrowing, were the gifts of language and being not so palpably dear to him. The poems of The English Boat are intimate with the mysteries of love, loss, faith, infinitude; they are infused with the wonder of great literature but never literary; their surfaces are more finely spun than ever before. Heir to Spenser, Blake, and Crane, poets of meticulous abandon, poets of radical innocence, Donald Revell is writing at the height of his powers." —James Longenbach















"Quiet, piercing lyrics, meditative and trenchant, unadorned, confident in their ability to transport, traverse time and space, these poems in The English Boat find Revell at the height of his powers. God, Jesus, and Mary are as close as friends and neighbors. In the ever-shifting complexity of faith, Revell's voice finds calm and righteous anger here, and forgiveness, via negativa, moving us to newness of day in the most troubled of times." —Gillian Conoley















"With the exquisite rough-hewn formal music of his poetry, with his devotional pastoral hymns and sculpted metaphysical illuminations, Donald Revell has become the fiercely eloquent American equivalent of Geoffrey Hill. The English Boat is simply astonishing. There is no contemporary poet who better serves his readers as fine balm for a wounded soul." —David St. John