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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 Where There Was No Pattern
"Stephen McDonald’s Where There Was No Pattern brims with life—both with the pulse of diminutive characters (a sow bug wonderfully imagined as God, a bluegill, and sand crabs)—and with the larger beings enlivening the poet’s world: friends, children, saints, dead oaks, a student, a Honda-driving French horn player, and Superman. . . . McDonald is a poet graced with a deft imagination, a poignant sense of mortality, and true insight into human pathos."—Maurya Simon, author of Ghost Orchid, nominated for 2004 National Book Award in Poetry
"These are poems of praise—for a sand crab's "feathery feet," a sowbug, "curled crustacean, closing with a perfect click," a grape, "taut skin caught cool and solid." Even mowing the lawn, "the long straight strides . . . pattern where there was no pattern." With lyricism and an open heart, Steve McDonald offers us the things of this world."—Ellen Bass, award-winning author of Mules of Love
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
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
