Donna Masini
Join us for a reading by poet Donna Masini
Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 5 p.m.
Sperry Center, Mary L. Hobson ’61 Lecture Hall (Room 104)
This event is free & open to the public
Books by Donna Masini:
4:30 Movie
on 4:30 Movie
“The wisdom on display here, and the formal rigor married to a lilting lightness of touch, feel truly inspired–moreover, they reveal a generosity and a clarity of vision rare in contemporary poetry… 4:30 Movie is a stunning, playful, searing, healing collection that will enlarge the reader and revive something crucial in American poetry.” Tracy K. Smith
“These poems are extraordinary—electric with anxiety, smart, witty, constantly turning on themselves. . . I love this book.” Marie Howe
“The speaker in this driven, headlong collection confronts the terrifying progress of her sister’s illness and watches her own mind perform the thousand jittery dances it does to ward off the unthinkable. Re-imagining her poems from the ground up, Masini emerges with a voice pressurized and anxious, a music tuned by an ear listening every second for the next alarm. 4:30 Movie is wrenching, full of smarts and nerve, and Donna Masini’s best book yet.” Mark Doty
“The poems in this new volume are not only Masini’s most formally adventurous and inventive, they are also her most compelling. . . There is a new gravitas in these poems, which, when combined with her formal intelligence, makes the poetry quite dazzling.” Lynn Emanuel
Turning to Fiction
on Turning to Fiction
Every page of Donna Masini’s new book bears the unmistakable signature of character: here she is, all of a piece, a vital and sexy speaker, wry and tender, wounded and indomitable, her body mind and heart held in the big, indifferent embrace of the only city that could be hers. These poems are pure New York, which is simply a way of saying they’re fully human, alive as the avenue. Mark Doty
Donna Masini is a strong poet of desire and longing, a confessional poet, yes, but with a priest on the other side of the screen. Above all she is a virtuoso conductor of the orchestra of the broken heart. Billy Collins
This is a book of body and soul—the profane reading the sacred, the sacred scolding the profane. These witty, dark, accomplished poems make a rare space for both and draw the reader into the adventure. Eavan Boland
That Kind of Danger
on That Kind of Danger
Donna Masini’s poems are on the wavelength of Whitman and Rukeyser but are inimitably her own: urban, sexual, working-class, passionate, marked by great moral intelligence and generosity. She is one of the marvelous new poets this country is generating in a terrible time. Adrienne Rich
Here is she: American, urban, beleaguered, transcendent, and brilliant. A fabulous new American poet bursting into our ears and our eyes with torrential clarity and intelligence, lust, and, yes, poetic genius. Long may she sing and may she sing all over all of us. June Jordan
About Yvonne
on About Yvonne
… a haunting novel of sexual obsession. Masini’s critique of contemporary New York [and the ] search for spiritual sustenance … provides a fresh take on an age-old theme. The New York Times
… Masini’s haunting novel is an erotic and riveting exploration of the nature and danger of love.
A. M. Homes
Danger is the aphrodisiac that makes Masini’s splendidly erotic creative juices flow…a smart, anguished, sexy account of a woman chasing her own psychological tail.” Publisher’s Weekly