The Natural Order of Things by Richard Donze

 

“In the tradition of the modern doctor-poet (think William Carlos Williams), Richard Donze attentively and precisely observes everything—and gives us here, by the phrase and the line, the startling languages of story, pain, the shortness of life, bouncing back, night’s shadows, “swallowed stress,” the optimism babies inspire, grief, and the sheer beauty of what in a poem previously published in JAMA he calls “accept[ing] random circumstance.” The lines are short and the experience is long. The convergence of these qualities is what poetry can be.”

–Al Filreis, PhD, University of Pennsylvania Kelly Family Professor of English; Director, Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing; Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House

 

“ . . . deeply felt, humanistic touch.”

–Johanna Shapiro, PhD,  Professor of Family Medicine and Director of the Program in Medical Humanities and Arts, University of California Irvine, School of Medicine

 

“In The Natural Order of Things, poet and physician Richard Donze explores the human life cycle and the mysterious connections that bind us to the past and to each other. Anchored in “I carry your name,” an extended meditation on a brother who died just after Richard was born, and whose name became the poet’s middle name, these poems bear compassionate witness to the stages of life—the joy and promise at the beginning, and the  suffering, disability, decline and renewed promise at the end. Donze’s style – brilliant word play, enjambment, colloquial language, lack of punctuation – energizes the poems and will delight the reader. Consider brief descriptions like “ventricular sputter,” “fifteen brown shades earth,” and “little star pieces fall from the sky.” Consider, too, this passage about a man with Parkinson’s disease,

 

But no help yet from

dope, dope-a-dope

I mean I mean

 

A fine poet, a strong, compassionate, and hopeful voice!”

–Jack Coulehan, author of The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems

 

“Richard Donze’s collection, The Natural Order of Things, certainly lives up to its title: the poems are full of nature and other things, and the poet orders the words in interesting and engaging ways. As a physician, he has learned well how to find answers and context, even in difficult situations, and he brings that same clear-sightedness to his poetry. And of course some wordplay as well. Donze will present the truth – but perhaps, to quote from one of his poems, an occasional “beautiful lie.” The collection’s first poem begins: “I am trying to imagine,” which could indeed apply to the poet’s entire endeavor. Donze’s subjects range widely, from family matters – love, births, and deaths – to nature, to hospital settings, where the poet emphasizes the humanity of his patients, and there’s even a salute to his faithful umbilicus. Some of his patients, he writes, are “living scan to scan,” but then so are we all. Life, as he puts it, is a “scramble for meaning,” as is poetry. The Natural Order of Things includes growing and maturing and dying, and Donze’s poem about picking strawberries ends with evocative conciseness reminiscent of ancient Chinese poetry:

 

short life

pick ripe

eat now

 

In short: read now.”

–John Shea,  Former editor, PENN Medicine magazine and author of Tales from Webster’s