Joseph Donahue

Terra Lucida XIII-XXI

In this two-volume installment of Terra Lucida, Joseph Donahue, “a seriously ‘religious’ poet,” in the words of Marjorie Perloff and “an underrecognized master… surely an inheritor of H.D.’s gnostic modernism,” in the words of Michael Leong, extends the work from Dark Church, the previous installment of his ongoing serial epic poem, whose mysterious edifice made sanctuary for memory, the funereal, and oracle, something both of these new volumes, Música Callada and Near Star, continue while also shapeshifting the work into something sinewy and new.

“This poetry is not a description but an extension of life.”—Geoffrey O’Brien

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This sumptuous box set consists of two volumes, Música Callada and Near Star.

Joseph Donahue

Música Callada

Named after a song cycle of twenty-eight piano miniatures by Catalan composter Federico Mompou, Música Callada (which means “silent music”), Joseph Donahue’s epic continuation of Terra Lucida, his serial pilgrimage through the “land that secretes light” (in Henry Corbin’s characterization), begins with a vision of Emily Dickinson’s “Black diagonal waves / cutting the sky of // the page,” and continues through “at all,” a suite that witnesses the death of the poet’s father in “extremes of / light and dark that tie // the beginning / to the end.” In between is a magical and mysterious poetry, at once luminous and ghostly, oneiric and arresting: “a plea / a hymn // an aria / an adoration.”

Joseph Donahue

Near Star

Near Star, Joseph Donahue’s epic continuation of Terra Lucida, his serial pilgrimage through the “land that secretes light” (in Henry Corbin’s characterization), begins haunted by the “grief stations” of the poet’s father’s death, only to witness the death of a dear childhood friend, “the Master of Disaster,” whose ashes we watch scattered over the waves with fireworks, scintillating in “long / glittering arcs.” We also watch with the poet a total eclipse of the Sun (“Totality is a hole / punched in the sky”) and discover with the poet a magical app that allows him to look from the stars in the sky to the mythical dead deep below in the underworld. Remove your sandals, you pilgrims, this is consecrated ground.

ISBN: 978-1-7374307-2-8

$35

SPECIAL OFFER

TERRA LUCIDA BOX SET + DARK CHURCH

$50

EXTRA SPECIAL OFFER

TERRA LUCIDA BOX SET + DARK CHURCH + NATHANIEL MACKEY’S BIRDS ANONYMOUS

$65