Donald Revell

Donald Revell (born 1954 in Bronx, New York) is an American poet, essayist, translator and professor.

Revell has won numerous honors and awards for his work, beginning with his first book, From the Abandoned Cities, which was a National Poetry Series winner. More recently, he won the 2004 Lenore Marshall Award and is a two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award in poetry. He has also received the Gertrude Stein Award, two Shestack Prizes, two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as from the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations. His most recent book is Drought-Adapted Vine (Alice James Books, 2015). He also recently published his translation of Arthur Rimbaud's A Season in Hell (Omnidawn Publishing, 2007).

Revell has taught at the Universities of Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, Alabama, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. He currently lives in Las Vegas. In addition to his writing, translating, and teaching, Revell was Editor of Denver Quarterly from 1988–94, and has been a poetry editor of Colorado Review since 1996.[1]

Revell received his B.A. in 1975 and his M.A. in 1977 from Binghamton University, and his Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo in 1980.

Honors and awards

• 2017 Nevada Writers Hall of Fame
• 2008 NEA Translation Award
• 2005 Silver Pen Award Archived 2018-07-17 at the Wayback Machine
• 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry finalist for Pennyweight Windows
• 2005 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for My Mojave
• 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry
• 1992 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry
• 1991 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry
• 1988 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• 1985 Pushcart Prize

Published works

Poetry collections

• Canandaigua (Alice James Books, 2024)
• White Campion (Alice James Books, 2021)
• The English Boat (Alice James Books, 2018)
• Drought-Adapted Vine (Alice James Books, 2015)
• Tantivy (Alice James Books, 2012)
• The Bitter Withy (Alice James Books, 2009)
• A Thief of Strings (Alice James Books, 2007)
• Pennyweight Windows: New And Selected Poems (Alice James Books, 2005)
• My Mojave (Alice James Books, 2003)
• Arcady (Wesleyan University Press, 2002)
• There Are Three (Wesleyan University Press, 1998)
• Beautiful Shirt (Wesleyan University Press, 1994)
• Erasures (Wesleyan University Press, 1992)
• New Dark Ages (Wesleyan University Press, 1990)
• The Gaza of Winter (University of Georgia Press, 1988)
• From the Abandoned Cities (Harper & Row Publishers, 1983)

Translations

• Last Verses by Jules Laforgue (Omnidawn, 2011)
• A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud (Omnidawn, 2007)
• The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire (Wesleyan University Press, 2004)
• Alcools: Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire (Wesleyan University Press, 1995)

Essay collections

• The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye (Graywolf Press, 2007)
• Invisible Green: Selected Prose (Omnidawn, 2005)
• Scholium (Poetry, May 2015)

Reviews

In a retrospective review of Revell's work written by Stephanie Burt for The Nation, she comments on Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems:

Revell now seeks a poetry appropriate not only to loneliness but to anger and happiness, not only to freighted symbols but to facts, not only to doubt but to faith. What's more, he seems to have found what he seeks.[2]

In Time magazine, Lev Grossman wrote about Pennywight Windows:

it takes guts to write more poems about peace, war, God and children, but Revell's are so fresh, it's as if he's the first person ever to do it. He makes you feel how painfully near grace and redemption are at all times, and yet how unattainable.[3]

There is a theme here and in other reviews of Revell's recent books. Stephanie Burt opens her review with a comment about how much Revell's work has changed in twenty years, noting the stylistic evolution, and the increasingly spiritual focus of Revell's work, which Grossman observes in his, and which Revell corroborates in an interview by Poets & Writers: "What's next for me? I am concerned with the governance of heaven, which is mostly silence. Living in Utah and Nevada, I take my current instruction from snow and sand. They are heavenly forms-substantial and effortless. May poems be so."[4]

References

1. Academy of American Poets > 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize Announcement Archived May 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
2. The Nation > The Revell Variations > by Stephanie Burt > 04/24/03
3. Grossman, Lev (July 10, 2005). "7 Books Of Poetry Worth Curling Up With". Time.
4. Poets & Writers > An Interview With Poet Donald Revell > By Nick Twemlow > 04/05/02

External links

• Alice James Books Website
• American Poetry Review > Donald Revell: An Interview
• Poetry Foundation > Death, by Donald Revell
• Video: Donald Revell Reading for Omnidawn Archived 2011-07-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Boston Review > Donald Revell Responds to Bloom Archived 2008-10-13 at the Wayback Machine
• American Poetry Review' > Excerpt from Invisible Green