Torn from the Sun

Both daring and exacting, Torn from the Sun, journeys through the ensnarements of mortality. The poems’ meditations, rendered in supple language and form, invite us to step along with the likes of Miyamoto Musashi, John Coltrane, Walter Benjamin, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vincent Van Gogh, as they fly and fall through labyrinthine paths of life.Torn from the Sun weaves mosaic steps that stir the ashes of rebirth, recognizing that these bewildering, narrow corridors are not a prison for death, but rather a space for interior discovery. Traced in this poetry isa way out and it is the way in.

Gregory Donovan is the author of Calling His Children Home (University of Missouri Press, 1993), which won the Devins Award for Poetry. His poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared inThe Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, 42opus, diode, Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast,Copper Nickel, and many other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies, includingCommon Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2003). Among other awards for his writing, he is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award from New England Writers, as well as grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Donovan is a faculty member in Virginia Commonwealth University’s graduate Creative Writing program, where he serves as Director of Creative Writing, and he is Senior Editor for Blackbird.