All Our Wonder Unavenged.

For this Nova Scotian author, this is his eighth book of poems. He not only uses words in surprising juxtapositions, but also his rhythms flow in harmonious ways. His singing songs are magical tones for his listeners. Even to a first-time reader of a Don Domanski poetry book, there is no doubt that this poet understands “wonder.” He has the poet’s chief talent of being able to capture the awe of life and living: an awareness of the moment with all its legacy of connections as he reveals multiple layers. He urges all to look twice at the surface of our environments, and then beyond.

He is a poet’s poet, keeping the language alive with his new ordering of words, as in his title—Our Wonder Unavenged. What a positive statement to aver that readers have not had their “awe/wonder” of childhood in all things and persons diminished!

His amazing metaphors and similes slide effortlessly off reader’s tongues as they gasp, “Aaah,” at their beauty. “An Od Animal Habit” begins, “nothing much to attend the stars tonight/ small talk of the weeds / koan of a boulder/ a line of trees in angelic orders/ the dead/ remembering all those candles they once lit” In “Pearls,” his opinion of current TV is obvious in “the family is packed in tight/ against the soap opera/ each face beautiful/ glowing in moth-light/ each body slack and beyond communion” Just as informative is his “Ars Poetica” about the arrival of the master’s voice, “coming home the long way/ through worlds.”

However local the details of sensory facts he uses, his messages are universal and important. Always asking readers to evaluate their relationship to the natural world and their place in it. No wonder he is published internationally and translated often. Domanski’s book, which won the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Award, is one to read slowly, one poem at a time, aloud, as well as reread over the years.