Donkey Gospel: Poems
by Tony Hoagland
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tony HoaglandEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-02-01
ISBN: 1555972683
Number of pages: 71
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Book Reviews of Donkey Gospel: Poems
Book Review: Hoagland's best book: humor and depth
Summary: 5 Stars
. . . you feel the faint grit
of ants beneath your shoes,
but keep on walking
because in this world
you have to decide what
you're willing to kill
Tony Hoagland points out in "Candlelight," with his usual in-your-face ruthlessness. He does not aspire to the timeless and the mysterious. He aims for penetrating social commentary, and he does it brilliantly.
Tony Hoagland is, among other things, a salutary contrast to Billy Collins. Both use humor, but in Tony's poems, you can't miss the underlying seriousness. In fact, at his best, he is one of the poets who, like Robert Cording, teach us seriousness and grappling with large issues (though I admit it's only at times that Tony is at his deep and startling best). Where Billy Collins monotonously undermines each poem by turning it into a joke, Hoagland knows how to use humor to say shock us into thinking and feeling. He also knows when not to use humor, since you can go only so far that way. Some of the best poems in this slender and near-perfect volume are perfectly straight, dark and sad and painfully honest.
My favorites include "Mistaken Identity," "Reading Moby Dick at 30,000 Feet," "Beauty," "Lucky," "Auden," and "Lawrence." "Medicine" and "The Confessional Mode" need to be read for more details about the speaker's mother, whom we encounter first in the masterpiece of this volume, "Mistaken Identity." "Lucky" is another mother-son poem, astonishing in its daring - savage, terrifying, and true.
I also recommend "Honda Pavarotti," a wonderful statement about art, and "Replacement," about the coarsening and cruelty that are the required part of male adulthood. Indeed, cruelty, both toward the self and others, is one of the major themes of this volume; it is a magnificent surprise to find, in the last poem, "Totally," the statement, "But I won't speak cruelly of myself."
I am especially interested in poems of dramatized imagination, such as "Mistaken Identity," and "Benevolence," which begins, "When my father dies and comes back as a dog" -- a startling reminder of Jack Gilbert's poem about his dead wife's coming back as a Dalmatian, but very different in emotional tone and details, dramatic and unforgettable.
I also admire the way that Tony is not afraid to make cultural comments without being paralyzed by the fear of political incorrectness. This is where humor helps a lot -- it's difficult not to like someone who makes you laugh. But, again, this volume is hardly limited to humor. We even get lyricism, for instance in the poem "From This Height," describing being in a hot tub:
We don't deserve pleasure
just as we don't deserve pain,
but it's pure sorcery the way the feathers of warm mist
keep rising from the surface of the water
to wrap themselves around a sculpted
clavicle or wrist. (p. 50)
-- though it's later on that we get the full reward, when Hoagland ponders all the labor that went into delivering this experience: "Down inside history's body, / the slaves are still singing in the dark; / the roads continue to be built" (p. 51).
What deepens these poems is precisely that awareness of the price of everything, of the suffering underneath the thin surface of pleasure, of how much rage and boredom has to be suppressed for daily life to go on. Indeed we don't often see
a housewife erupting
from her line at the grocery store
because she just can't stand
the sameness anymore
-- but that inner scream exists, a silent howl.
There are also some memorable observations about illness:
Daydreaming comes easy to the ill:
slowed down to the speed of waiting rooms,
you learn to hang suspended in the wallpaper,
to drift among the magazines and plants,
feeling a strange love
for the time that might be killing you.
. . .
suffering itself is medicine
and to endure enough will cure you
of anything.
Hoagland has the kind of depth that comes from both intelligence and suffering. His humor is intelligent; it's designed to make us think and actually suffer a little. Because of its humor, this book may appear glib. But don't be deceived -- it is full of awareness of human suffering.
Frankly, given my usual dislike of conversational-tone poems, I am astonished to find myself enjoying Donkey Gospel more and more each time I return to it. It could be because of finding passages of unexpected lyricism (e.g. "and the almond trees/ drop their white petals of applause"). But I think it's mainly because Tony Hoagland's Angel of Reality (or call him the Angel of Ruthless Perception) is moderated by the depth and seriousness of the Angel of Love and Death.
As in all memorable poetry, there are surprises here, especially the surprises of affirmation, of finding our messy lives actually worth living. These are the last lines of "Totally," the last poem in the book:
The defoliated trees look frightened
at the edge of the town,
as if the train they missed
had taken all their clothes.
The whole world in unison is turning
toward a zone of nakedness and cold.
But me, I have this strange conviction
that I am going to be born.
Summary of Donkey Gospel: Poems
Winner of the 1997 James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets
In his second collection of poems, Hoagland's generous effervescence and a jujitsu cleverness sparkle through line after line confronting negotiation and compromise, gender and culture, sex and rock music, sons and lovers, truth and beauty, and so forth. From the boy who speaks only in "Kung Fu" dialogue to the guy who visits a lesbian bar and sees his mother, this often funny and always thoughtful book of poems offers fresh, surprisingly frank meditations on the credentials for contemporary manhood.
In his second collection of poems, Hoagland's generous effervescence and a jujitsu cleverness sparkle through line after line confronting negotiation and compromise, gender and culture, sex and rock music, sons and lovers, truth and beauty, and so forth. From the boy who speaks only in "Kung Fu" dialogue to the guy who visits a lesbian bar and sees his mother, this often funny and always thoughtful book of poems offers fresh, surprisingly frank meditations on the credentials for contemporary manhood.
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