Table of Contents

Slack Action Lift Slack Action Assisted Care Inspirit Hand The Contents Eocene Plant Fossil With a Line from a Dream Four Haiku Troy The Stadium More than Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Listener The Selected Poems A Touretter's 12-Tone SonnetToy Poems Jack in the Box Spinning Top Yo-Yo Rocking Horse Figurine Marbles Kite Ball Material CauseHouse of Cards Game of Marbles House of Cards Magic Lantern Kite Metaphor Correspondances An Honest Man Open When Things Are Looking Up Donkey's Way November 5th Two on Bonnard Sweet Talk At the Garden of Eden Thrift Shop and Exchange Express Checkout Jacob Leper Bell Pangaea Twice Over

About the Author

Jeffery Donaldson is the author of four previous collections of poetry, most recently Guesswork (Goose Lane, 2011). Palilalia (McGill-Queen's, 2008) was a finalist for the Canadian Author's Association Award for Poetry. He teaches poetry and American literature at McMaster University.

Reviews

'[Slack Action's verse] is beautifully measured, not constrained by metre or rhyme, but always conscious of them, working through its chosen forms rather than remaining bound by them. It has a real patience as well, a willingness to let a poem develop, to pause, even to be interrupted, if the weight and gravity of the subject should demand it, and this is how the poems of the collection need to be read, with patience, with an openness to pause and interrupt and reread. They need us to lay our hands on them and find their weight.' -- Jeremy Luke Hill Donaldson's words flow like they could only ever belong together, thoughtful and witty, entertaining and moving. Poetry is often characterized as thoughtful or humorous or entertaining, but it's much less common for it to be marked by all of these descriptions at once. Jeffery Donaldson's collection Slack Action manages all of these - and more. The title, Slack Action, refers to the railroading term for the degree of play between the couplings of moving cars. It's an appropriate title and gives the sense of Donaldson as a master engineer, keeping everything connected tightly enough to make a cohesive whole, but loosely enough to allow a sense of playfulness in his poems. Slack Action is Donaldson's fifth collection of poetry. One of his previous volumes, Palilalia, was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry. His expertise is always evident, but it is perhaps most notable when his sense of humor combines with imaginative metaphors and a near-perfect ability to summon words that are uncommon yet familiar, that roll delicately in the mouth and arrive gracefully at the ears. From "Marbles": "I was the king of a dominion's bright subjects: globed iridescences in glass, buffed lustres, and stirrings inside crystal shape in shape, ribbon and shawl, nebulae and nimbus, silk scarves and swirls of DNA flung skyward in their gelled ethers, clear-eyed experiments..." The book is divided into three sections: "Slack Action," "Toy Poems," and "House of Cards." Each section contains poems related to its title, most directly "Toy Poems," which offers selections like "Jack-in-the-Box," "Yo-yo," "Rocking Horse," and "Ball," among others. In Donaldson's hands, every poem does seem to be his toy, manipulated for his own entertainment, and there is a palpable sense of the poet's enjoyment of the process of writing poetry throughout the book. Even when Donaldson's poems seem, at first glance, to be nearly random collections of syllables within a given structure, such as the fourteen lines of "A Touretter's Twelve-Tone Sonnet," there is a method to the madness, and the words flow like they could only ever belong together: "The glib angle's soffit gables true. Chaff saddleback, the aster's alms. The woodlot's whistle and jib." Slack Action's sole flaw is a minor one: the table of contents is slightly off, with each poem's page number off target by two pages. It's a small but noticeable error, and one that should have been caught before publication. However, once readers find themselves in the grasp of Donaldson's intoxicating poetry, it's likely they'll steam through the book, unhindered by page numbering or anything else. -- Peter Dabbene Foreword Reviews '... a complex and ultimately compelling collection of poems that's among the year's best.' -- Jim Johnstone 'If "slack action" is a term associated with the 'slack' left between trains - a peculiar irony in which distance creates harmony - Donaldson is a champion at blending these fundamental disharmonies into a readable display of pure emotion and attachment. Each installment seems like it could be an integer on the same ladder of parentage, childhood, teaching, and existentialism. Better still, this emotionality never comes about as an incidental abstraction ... Instead, its intentionality keeps the language pithy and the vocabulary utterly stunning. Above all, Donaldson is a master of common sense writing and Slack Action operates in this form on every level. The seasoned reader of Donaldson's poetry is princely rewarded for recognize the familiar quirks of the experienced poet... Like a nice pork chop, Slack Action is well-tempered and crusted, but tender at its core.' -- James Puntillo The Paper St. Journal