Calling His Children Home: Poems

by Gregory Donovan

In the title poem of Calling His Children Home, winner of the 1993 Devins Award for Poetry, Gregory Donovan masterfully melds the stories of jazz great Buddy Bolden, hot-air balloonist Buddy Bartley, a fellow New Orleans performer and Eunice Winkless, a stunt rider of the same era who thrilled crowds by plunging on horseback into a pool of water. In poems notable for their strong, forward-driving lines, Donovan's characters reenact that plunge into the discovery of the self - and the selves - hidden behind the mirror that calls its children home.The sounds of their journey can be heard humming in high-voltage wires handled by a rural lineman, in the songs of a ragpicker keeping himself company in the alleys of St. Louis, in the chant of Tibetan monks, in the buzzing voice on the telephone, or in the deep rumble of a train.Like the soulful sounds of Buddy Bolden's cornet, Donovan's poems call forth wanderers, adventurers, working men and working women, characters from the mythical past - all those who search for the self, who search for home - offering an invitation to the blues, with all its power to hurt, and to heal.

54 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Gregory Donovan has authored the poetry collections TORN FROM THE SUN, newly published by Red Hen Press, and CALLING HIS CHILDREN HOME, winner of the Devins Award from the University of Missouri Press, as well as poetry, essays, and fiction published in a great variety of print and online journals. Born in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas and raised by adoptive parents in St. Louis, Missouri, he later attended the University of Missouri, Columbia. After college, he lived and worked in North Carolina for some years before going on to earn an M.A. at the University of Utah and a Ph.D. from Binghamton University where his dissertation director was the novelist John Gardner. Donovan now teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University, a program which he helped establish, and he is Senior Editor of the well-known online journal BLACKBIRD (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu). With the writer/director Michele Poulos, he also has produced A LATE STYLE OF FIRE, a documentary about the life and work of the poet Larry Levis featuring music composed by Iron & Wine, due out in 2015.