Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Domestic Economy
    Domestic Economy
    Domestic Economy
    Ebook61 pages20 minutes

    Domestic Economy

    By John Donlan

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A sequence of fifty dated poems, four quatrains each; lyrical arguments; quick thinking amid the rational absurdity of everyday machinery; intuitive explorations of unknown energies; a diary of the unconscious.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateOct 15, 1990
    ISBN9781771311809
    Domestic Economy
    Author

    John Donlan

    Donlan lives in Vancouver half the year, where he worked as a reference librarian at the Vancouver Public Library for 20 years. For the other six months, he lives on a lake north of Kingston, Ontario, surrounded by 177 acres of wilderness. Spirit Engine is his fourth collection of poetry.

    Read more from John Donlan

    Related to Domestic Economy

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      John Ashbery

      Mar 15, 2019

      He could understand the things at home.—Wallace Stevens, “Things of August” Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desireof many dwindles to usand our “activities,” wholesomeor otherwise. Soon it becomes apparentthat neither they nor I have any prise o

      4 min read

    • Article

      Any Given Day

      Mar 29, 2021

      Any Given Day
      11 min read

    • Article

      Vegas Neon

      Mar 1, 2020

      Vegas Neon
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Storytellers

      Apr 28, 2023

      The Storytellers
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tales from Titchmarsh

      Nov 17, 2022

      Tales from Titchmarsh
      3 min read

    • Article

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend

      Jun 17, 2020

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend
      4 min read

    • Article

      Diving Through Windows

      Dec 5, 2017

      I dwell in Possibilit y — / A fairer House than Prose — / More numerous of Windows — / Superior — for Doors — —Emily Dickinson My wife and I live in a 1907 Craftsman bungalow with original crown glass windows. They were hand-blown in an era long befo

      6 min read

    • Article

      Diving Through Windows

      Dec 13, 2017

      BY JUSTIN HOCKING I dwell in Possibilit y — / A fairer House than Prose — / More numerous of Windows — / Superior — for Doors — —Emily Dickinson My wife and I live in a 1907 Craftsman bungalow with original crown glass windows. They were hand-blown i

      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Mar 4, 2024

      To Err Is Human; to Forgive, Supine —S. J. Perelman, Baby, It’s Cold Inside, 1970 You must know the bees have come early this year too: I see them visit aster, sweet Williams, bleeding hearts, and azalea blossoms hardy enough to not have crisped with

      3 min read

    • Article

      About Town Millers Flat

      Jan 23, 2022

      About Town Millers Flat
      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      “the possibility of joy in the face of death” —Georges Bataille Couldn’t get “I” nor “we” to settle down, stay unresolved in time in crisp white burial shirts could do bouts of theatrical weeping weary though exacting avant garde gestures of the carp

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

      Jun 15, 2018

      And, after the explosion, made spheres sing,A pure expression of pure poetry,Like rising rain or a nation with noFlag—. Something that whispers as the airDoes just before the lightning comes. A pureExpression of the breaks in the blank lakesOn Neptun

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2023

      1. Wine-makers say it’s the complex flavorcreated by the singular terrain of place: the kinds of minerals in the soilfiltered through the soft pulse and coil of earthworms; the curl of fog that snakesaround blushed grapes like wisps of smoke; the tas

      6 min read

    • Article

      Mary Shelley And Mourning As An Essential Act Of Apocalypse

      Feb 28, 2018

      1. Little cloud-white lambs wobble over the leas and paddocks, nibbling clover under a wooly sky. Ladies and lords and mustachioed manservants converse through the halls of castles. The subjects and soldiers in the hay fields out past the battlements

      5 min read

    • Article

      Arctic Monkey

      Oct 13, 2022

      Arctic Monkey
      10 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 1, 2023

      In the popular belief, ghosts are a selecting tribe, avoiding millions, speaking to one. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Demonology,” North American Review, 1877 Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose he

      3 min read

    • Article

      Paul,

      Jul 1, 2020

      Houston, April 2019 The coarse and leafy stalks, like memory,Began to soften in my hands. The kaleMassaged with olive oil and salt. Silently, You sat on the couch as if in grisaille,Scrolling through the twitter of the state.A fragile, bluesy cover s

      14 min read

    • Article

      Take A Moment

      Mar 22, 2020

      Take A Moment
      31 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 1, 2021

      If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. —Rudyard Kipling, “Epitaphs of the War,” The Years Between, 1919 She consulted me, a glance, and said: “I think not anything off the wagon. It arrives too quickly. Let’s have somethi

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Domestic Economy

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Domestic Economy - John Donlan

      Fire

      Domestic Economy

      Sometimes putting a few things on the line

      is just another achievement to tally, a notched

      gun barrel pointed at dread.

      What are some reasons for speaking?  "In May

      the maples are cascading frozen

      bursts of pure time, holding out

      their green snapshots until we're tired

      of looking and let them fall."

      That was how mushrooms grew in the shower – we

      kept trying to catch what was happening, and

      later we read or had fun while the dark

      hid what it hid, and light ricocheted in the streets.

      Meaning waits in the lobby while we stall

      with housework and BMW maintenance -

      it takes all weekend to seal the driveway,

      making it last.

      29  May  '86

      Governor Simcoe's Elm

      The afternoon makes as much sense as it needs.

      Cosmically arranged tree shadows,

      the picnic finch's arrival, bouts of dread -

      all remain faintly visible through threadbare description

      useful as a kind of sensory-memory cement

      to hold some time together. Through the holes

      where the voice stops, you accept

      the blissful now's special one-time offer.

      Those motors behind you in the suburbs

      were roaring until just now, ignored:

      the edges of attention deserve attention too -

      the snuffling, living dark beyond the flashlight's

      particular waves changing what they shine on.

      While almost everything escapes you, these persistent

      uncommercial experiments can erupt with the power

      of dumptruck or chainsaw engines, more delicately directed.

      2  Aug.  '86

      Balloon Dance

      We're giving the game away, dismantling

      bourgeois discourse – easier than it sounds

      now that the hard salvation is behind them.

      We can lick sunlight off the streets, they're so clean.

      If there was an answer, it would lie in festive

      maypoling, partly. The rest sprawls like a teenager -

      unruly, no longer us, unconditionally loved.

      Maybe its goddamn aggravating habits

      are a mirror for our gleamer inside, ready

      to shine at all parties, once it gets

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1