What Do You Do? by Kathryn Donohue

The poems in Kate Donohue’s debut are not about her life — instead, they question what having a life really means. They are not about where she is from — they question what it means to come from somewhere. They are not about inheritance, either — they question how to construct our lives and our generation from an inherited language and history: “We’ll use the words we’ve been given” — and if we follow her lead, we’ll see the importance of recording details that often go unrecorded: “An old priest/ told my brother// he loved Scranton, because the mountains made him think of an island.” Here, any ordinary shred of experience opens up a possibility for poetry, and Donohue’s poetry, intimate and worldly at once, is also deeply generous precisely because of its unwavering honesty. “What Do You Do?” is not about what is done but about what response to the world — given the baffling, raw, and chaotic thing it is — will suffice. This work comes from that rare and real place where pain and confusion can transform into art. Hopefully, this chapbook is just the beginning of what Donohue will give us.

–Sarah V. Schweig

“Kate Donohue writes a rare kind of poem: sharp as a dart, but restorative as a salve. “I want to be the one who wins / and the one who cleans the wounds,” she writes. While her poems are framed by questions, they offer something much richer than mere answers: they offer intelligence, honesty, and language wielded like a surgeon’s scalpel. Every time I read these poems, I find something new to admire.”

–Ryan Teitman