The Donkeys Postpone Gratification by Corinne Demas
$14.00
Corinne Demas‘s remarkable donkey poems are “really” about the sensitivity to the lives of other creatures that defines our own humanity. Along the way are comical, whimsical, and — yes — even a few sentimental moments. I’m reminded of a neo-Franciscan prayer I read a while ago: “Dear Father, hear and bless your beasts, and singing birds. And guard with tenderness small things that have no words.”
–Ed Ochester, Editor, Pitt Poetry Series
Author of Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and NewAside from C. K. Chesterton’s well known religious lyric, “The Donkey,” donkeys have not figured notably in poetry. This collection begins to fill that gap in an engaging way. Corinne Demas‘s animal portraits are full of shrewd and sensitive observation; and like all thoughtful animal poems, they have something striking to tell us about the human animal as well.
–Robert B. Shaw, Author of Solving for X
The Donkeys Postpone Gratification is a wonderful book about three gentle creatures: two beloved donkeys, and the woman who cares for them. though she can never know quite what they’re thinking, the narrator of these fine poems imagines a rich inner life for her donkeys, and the reader of these poems is all the richer for it. This book will easily become a classic alongside May Sarton’s The Poet and the Donkey and William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.
–Lesléa Newman, Poet Laureate, Northampton, MA
Why do you have donkeys, we’d ask Corinne Demas. Now we know. So she could write this dream sequence of poems. The donkeys become muses for a poet who explores consciousness and memory, who deliciously details the seasons and the corralled world. Humor, wistful speculation, heartbreak: it’s all here.
–Sharon Dunn, Editor Emerita, Agni Reviews
Description
The Donkeys Postpone Gratification
by Corinne Demas
$14, paper
Corinne Demas is the author of two collections of short stories, five novels, a memoir, a collection of poetry, two plays, and numerous books for children. She is Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and a fiction editor of the Massachusetts Review.
She grew up in New York City, in Stuyvesant Town, the subject of her memoir, Eleven Stories High, Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, 1948-1968. She attended Hunter College High School, graduated from Tufts University, and completed a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She lived in Pittsburgh for a number of years, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh and at Chatham College.
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