SoA professor practices peculiar poetics with new anthology

When poet Timothy Donnelly was diagnosed with scarlet fever as a child, he told his parents he couldn’t die because he had not yet written a book.

Now a graduate of the MFA program and a professor of creative writing at Columbia’s School of the Arts, Donnelly has published two books. His most recent anthology of poems, “The Cloud Corporation,” was released in September and has received immense critical and popular praise.

As an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins, Donnelly initially anticipated majoring in film, which he considered a wonderful vehicle with which he could create fantastical new worlds. Donnelly soon came to admire poetry as an equally expressive and personal means of delving into the fantastical. After participating in a poetry workshop and exploring his creative writing style, Donnelly decided to study poetry academically.

In an era when confessional and post-confessional poetry was in vogue, Donnelly often received criticism from his peers. His professors came to his defense and explained that the whimsical and strange do have a role in serious literature.

Donnelly creates fantasy worlds as a way to develop his own poetic technique, rhythm, and style. He believes that it was necessary to first develop technical writing skills before he could include more personal themes from his own life or address social responsibility.

He explored the technique of writing as a starting point because, as he said, “language needs craft, not just transmitting intelligence.” It was only after completing his undergraduate and graduate education and publishing his first anthology of poems that Donnelly felt prepared to use his crafted language to incorporate more personal and worldly themes.

In “The Cloud Corporation,” Donnelly deals with political topics such as torture at Abu Ghraib and the Vietnam My Lai Massacre. Although he clearly addresses these issues, he does not take an overt political stance on them. Instead, Donnelly chooses to convey his opinions through poetic elements such as irony and rhythm.

Donnelly believes that poetry “comes close to religion insofar as it allows you to be in touch with something larger than yourself.” Poetry critics have viewed “The Cloud Corporation” as an exceptional portrayal of post-Sept. 11 life: His work encapsulates our fear of death and our fear of corporations. This isn’t surprising given that Donnelly’s primary goal as a poet is to, as he said, “investigate certain kinds of psychologies” in order to create new worlds.

Given the popularity and ubiquitous presence of digital media in our lives, poetry is often viewed as an inconvenient and indirect method of communication. However, Donnelly believes that, as he says, a “good chunk of the population” is aching to slow down and find a “sense of order” in their lives through words.

Donnelly’s words of wisdom to aspiring writers are first to be patient. He explains that absorbing your surroundings and cultivating your craft take time. At the moment he is following his own advice as he waits “for some change to happen in his mind” before beginning his next poem. Donnelly encourages those who feel that writing is their calling to remain committed despite discouragement or self-doubt.

When asked whether he longs to experiment with other forms of writing, Donnelly smiled. “I can’t,” he said, because he has “come to depend on the rhythmic aspect of poetry … the pauses, the containable segments, the organization, the quirky aspects of language.”