The Poetry of Steve McDonald

Praise for Credo

“Credo is an intimate and beautiful collection drawn from one man’s life. But it goes far beyond that to show us the commonality of our lives, rooted in rich physicality, growing in failure and humility and the heart breaking open. Through vivid language and well-chosen images, these poems bring us closer together.”

—Ellen Bass, Like a Beggar

“These are the poems of idea and story, dense with the images of daily life, its tattoos and churches, its children and rain. They follow the pattern of a man’s recovery, his laughter and grief, his landscape and hope, his nostalgia and desire.”
—Joseph Millar, Kingdom

Praise for House of Mirrors

“Steve McDonald reveals the sacred that’s in everything around us. He finds God in a sowbug, in a blue-belly lizard whose eyes are deep as every unanswered question, and in his hands, even starting up a lawn mower is a kind of prayer, a recognition that the grass is long,/your time is short. In the title poem, when the boy steps out of the House of Mirrors, the faces of the people at the carnival waver and shimmer. This is what these poems do—they show us the shimmering world." –Ellen Bass, The Human Line

“Steve McDonald makes the ordinary extraordinary as he examines nature and ourselves in unflinching detail. In House of Mirrors, we move from the wonder of a spider and its intricate web to the machinations of the human heart. The beauty of McDonald’s imagery opens us to his and our own vulnerability and struggles (“mud nests hang . . . like forgotten laundry”) – language that views the natural with reverence. In this book the startling and raw turn into a state of grace. These are elegant poems – moving and redemptive.” –Judith Pacht, Summer Hunger

“I'm drawn to the poems of Steve McDonald, the way they move so easily from the sacred to the profane and back again. Their language is both lyrical and specific. Their subject is the human heart.” –Joseph Millar, Blue Rust

“House of Mirrors is about people: fatherhood, family, strangers and friends, notable for its attention to language and empathy for its subject matter, the human in all their many guises.” –Dorianne Laux, The Book of Men

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Credo

Finalist in Brick Road Poetry Contest

"The beautifully crafted poems of this, McDonald’s second full-length collection, take us many places: correctional facilities, Catholic churches, Jeffers’ Hawk Tower, and Costco, but above all remain deeply rooted in soil, like the poems of Seamus Heaney.”
--Gail Wronsky, Imperfect Pastorals

Some poems from Credo:

Overtones

Central California Women’s Facility

Leaving the Parking Lot, I Pass a Homeless Man

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The Poetry of Steve McDonald

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Praise for House of Mirrors

Credo