Walter Donway

Speak Their Names, Once More Walter Donway

I have taken joy in the Great Tradition, both in reading and writing. But I am not an exemplar by which that tradition can be judged. I simply do not rank. Judge based on the masters. My personal love is the poetry of William Butler Yeats, one of the last poets in the Great Tradition, the last of the Romantic school, the last Romantic poet to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. If my verse has a significance, it is in suggesting to readers, perhaps aspiring new poets, that a degree of competence in verse forms can give energy and artistic structure to subjects from Facebook to the Las Vegas shootings of 2017 to classic themes of love, science, music, reflection on history, and reflection on death. It can begin to raise writing to the level of poetry; there is no other way to scale that height. A poet will come among us and his work in the Great Tradition will cast a light like no other on who we are, what we have cherished, and what our fate may be. Until then, I invite the reader to explore, with me, the sense of sound and how sound makes sense.