New Selected Poems: 1964-1999 by Douglas Dunn
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Amazon.co.uk Review
The Donkey's Ears is everything modern poetry should be: clever, lyrical, accessible, enlightening. It tells, in mildly formalised rhyme and metre, the fascinating story of the Russian Baltic fleet, that set sail from Saint Petersburg in 1905 and voyaged half way round the world, only to be crushed a year later by the Japanese Imperial navy at the battle of Tsushima.
The Donkey's Ears is everything modern poetry should be: clever, lyrical, accessible, enlightening. It tells, in mildly formalised rhyme and metre, the fascinating story of the Russian Baltic fleet, that set sail from Saint Petersburg in 1905 and voyaged half way round the world, only to be crushed a year later by the Japanese Imperial navy at the battle of Tsushima.
The "narrator" is Flag Engineer Eugene Politovsky, a science-officer aboard the flagship Suvorov. He was to die on deck at the outset of the battle. Douglas Dunn has culled the facts and tenor of Eugene's letters home to his much-missed wife--which in poeticised form comprise this book--from a posthumous 1906 volume about Politovsky and the fleet, called Lubin to Tsushima (the latter name means "donkey's ears", in Japanese).
The brilliance of Dunn's achievement is the way he spins such a lushly coloured, authentically textured narrative tapestry from his basic material. Whether Dunn/Politovsky is describing the fleet's overlong anchorage in the torpor of Madagascar: "...day by day demoralising heat settles on languid card-games. Flaking Paint. Unpolished brass. Coal everywhere." The simple beauty of sailing under Iberian skies: "Nocturnal clearings and Hispanic stars, The asterisks of God." Or dealing with officer-toffs and their attitude problems: "I've had enough of Admiralty blah, Corruption, bribes, stupidity, mistakes," he conveys the fetid atmosphere of the fated navy with charm, verve and no little beauty.--Sean Thomas
Synopsis
Politovsky was the flag-engineer on the flagship "Kniaz Suvorov". This work presents his secretly written verse-letters to his wife, Sophie, cataloguing the squalor and frustrations of life aboard ship. He gives a portrait of a man caught in the destinies of progress, history and geography.
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