The Disappearance of Fate

Joseph Donahue’s latest book is lit by intelligence, visionary light, and what Seamus Heaney called the “redemptive effect” as the poet attempts to bear the weight of the world. The Disappearance of Fate chronicles our chaotic time where a forked tongue can strike like lightning. These poems form a narrative that maps both marvelous and murderous events created by the world’s diverse religions and nations, ancient and current. History runs parallel with present time. Birds perch and flit through crafted lines. Luminous dreams blend with reality. Donahue’s latest book is veined with traces of “immortal diamond.” The Disappearance of Fate is an exquisite book.
- Robert Adamson

For me, The Disappearance of Fate is an experience of the soul who unerringly spools the silky filaments of vertical dimension through Beauty and Impermanence to the Beloved. When mirrors fall silent, the warmth and substance of trust is a rare and subtle feat. Creating, recreating, a hypnotic mesh, Donahue’s dappled reflections are in advance of some ellipsoidal light curve. Whether Reality is wounded, or a “Pleasure trauma,” Donahue nevertheless gently, nimbly, moves the handprint, within incandescent materials as if holy burning gold.
- Lissa Wolsak