Start with the Trouble: Poems

by Daniel Donaghy

In his second collection of poems, Daniel Donaghy uses the power of poetry to connect the Kensington section of Philadelphia he knew as a boy––a place replete with crime, poverty, fractured families, and various other kinds of darkness––to upstate New York’s woods, rural Connecticut’s town greens and small churches, Vancouver’s back alleys, the killing ground of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Kiowa County, Colorado, and the shores of ancient Greece. In doing so, he examines the relationship between memory and identity and strives to give voice to those who might otherwise be forgotten by history. Start with the Trouble is the place of fist fights and first kisses, where we sit beside the dying and where we sing to those not yet born. It is where Michelangelo’s Pieta recreates itself on a Kensington sidewalk, where a mother watches helplessly as two older boys dangle her son from the roof of a building, where a prostitute writes poems between tricks before she disappears without a trace. It is where Bruce Springsteen goes back in time to woo Circe and the Sirens, where a father returns from the dead in the voice of Babe Ruth, where a mother’s spirit rises from the shadows of spruce trees, where Santa forsakes his reindeer and slides into town behind sled dogs. It is where simple gestures such as opening a car trunk or loading a wheelbarrow become portals into faraway, nightmarish worlds in which the young are forced to bear too much witness to the world. Start with the Trouble is a place where beauty exists amidst every kind of ugliness, and where that beauty is made even more precious because of the depths from which it rises.

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Mark Oppenlander]

Daniel Donaghy writes a type of poetry I really enjoy, one replete with narrative and struggling to make meaning and identity from scraps of half-remembered incidents.

Most of the poems in this book take us to places in the poet's childhood or adolescence. Donaghy grew up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, an area that saw its share of trouble. Donaghy remembers this urban environment through the eyes of a child, sharing stories of his family, his education, violence he witnesses, first love and early crushes, addiction, and everyday occurrences like traffic jams. Occasionally he tries to relate how he felt about his childhood with how he views it now, as an adult. A child accepts their life as "what is," but the adult asks "what did it mean?" He connects slivers of memory to other things in his older mind, including Shakespeare and Michelangelo and the work he does as a teacher at a private school.

I appreciate Donaghy's ability to create images within images, and to move from vivid depictions of everyday incidents - a rock concert, a car accident - to metaphysical considerations about God and humanity's place in the cosmos. His contemplation of his mother's last day ("Rally") or his review of a phone call with an angry parent about a child's bad grade ("Why I Quit") are two examples, but there are many more. Everything here feels grounded without being dragged to the ground. And yet, the lyric nature of poetry, and the free-flowing feel of verse still infuses these sometimes gritty tales.

I would seek out other books of poetry by Donaghy and, as an infrequent poetry reader, I suppose that that's about as high a recommendation as I can offer.

[Jennifer]

This is a really great poetry collection. A friend recommended this book to me and I'm glad she did. I usually don't like poems, but I loved these. Beautiful poems about family and compelling, tough poems about growing up in Philly. Highly recommended.