The Problem of the Many

By Timothy Donnelly

• Description
• Reviews

• Longlisted for the 2019 Believer Poetry Award
  

  If The Cloud Corporation is, as John Ashbery called it, “the poetry of the future, here, today,” then Timothy Donnelly’s third collection, The Problem of the Many, is the poetry of the future yet further pressed to the end of history. In astonishingly textured poems powerful and adroit in their negotiation of a seeming totality of human experience, Donnelly confronts—from a contemporary vantage—the clutter (and devastation) that civilization has left us with, enlisting agents as far flung as Prometheus, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Jonah, NyQuil, and Alexander the Great.
  
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• Impressive in its precise articulation and range of insights. . . . Donnelly’s eye traces satellite images and contortions of fire above a refinery, while using deadpan humor with equal vividness. From gut flora to galaxies, these poems offer glimpses “that waver like air above lit candles,” restoring meaning to the world in the process.
  Starred Review, Publishers Weekly