…a work of profound beauty and
searing emotional power.
—M.L. WILLIAMS, Author of Game
searing emotional power.
—M.L. WILLIAMS, Author of Game
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early praise for The Epistemology of Loss
"Donald Wolff’s The Epistemology of Loss is a work of profound beauty and searing emotional power. Nature in many of the poems offers contrast—its beauty, its utter indifference, its tendency to silence—it can represent “the muteness of the poet,” as Larry Levis put it. Yet the power of the book is its excavation of the domestic, how lyric time is intricately layered in it."
—M.L. WILLIAMS, Author of Game
“There is much to admire in Donald Wolff’s The Epistemology of Loss—wit, a true and exact irony, a wry humor that does not allow the poet to escape examination, as well as the command of many forms. But the compelling feature of this poetry is its deep humanity, the risk the poems take reaching for meaning, for some portion of light that might redeem our spirits, and which is ultimately representative for us all—the mark of the best poetry.”
—CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY, Editor of
Naming The Lost: The Fresno Poets—Interviews & Essays “Donald Wolff’s The Epistemology of Loss collects thirty-eight poems and arranges them in five movements that give the collection a mature and sophisticated architecture. The volume earns word by word, line by line,
form by form, its right to speak to all of us. Wolff reminds us, with both self-deprecating humor and a resilient sadness, what’s at stake if we don’t find the right words. His expansive, balanced vision takes us deeply into the perilous way of the world and guides us cautiously out again, the journey all but complete—and well worth our studied attention. It’s a fine, rich, and complex book.” —GEORGE VENN, Author of Lichen Songs: New and Selected Poems
“The Epistemology of Loss is marked by the sense it gives of a person talking intimately, a hard thing to make so natural. It’s a different book each time I read it and I think I’ve caught up to the central theme of the collection—how perilous life is, and how precious for that reason. There’s something very encouraging about the way love emerges from tragedy and near tragedy in so many of the pieces. They speak to us with close assurance and commitment.”
—PAUL MERCHANT, Translator with Michael Faletra of
Unless She Beckons: Poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym presented in Welsh and English |
praise for Donald's earlier work, Soon Enough
“Soon Enough’s landscape is western, cut through by canyons and rivers, populated by bear, even the bison. Reality arises from the details of a life fully lived there: fatherhood, work, memory and hope. The best poems in this collection are the darkest, the squirrel in the belly of the coyote, a man in the grip of his life.”
—DORIANNE LAUX, Author of Only as the Day Is Long, finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
“Donald Wolff’s Soon Enough is a book haunted by danger, affliction, imminent disasters, and his poems are talismans against the ferocious onslaught. With these poems, Wolff stares down catastrophe and peril, and celebrates the sheer wonder of our survival—the glory of our sad, fragile, beautiful lives.”
—GARY YOUNG, Author of That’s What I Thought: Poems
About the Author
Donald Wolff has published poems and creative nonfiction in many journals, including the High Desert Journal, The Montserrat Review, Calapooya, Oregon East, The White Pelican Review, ASKEW, basalt, Cloudbank, Gold Man, Miramar, SALT, Packinghouse, and Solo Nova. He has appeared in a number of anthologies as well, including The Watershed Anthology, the RondeDance annual, the Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poetry and Poetics from California, Writing Home: An Eastern Oregon Anthology, and Aspects of Robinson: Homage to Weldon Kees. In 2004, Wolff was a resident writer at Fishtrap, in Imnaha, OR. His chapbook, Some Days, was published by Brandenburg Press later that year. Soon Enough, a booklength collection of poems, was published by Wordcraft of Oregon. He benefitted from a month-long summer residency working on The Epistemology of Loss, at the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center, associated with the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. Wolff recently retired from Eastern Oregon University as Emeritus Professor of English and Writing.
photo by Hannah Whitelock-Wolff
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