A new review of Hymn To Life by Timothy Donnelly !

We only see the wind because we see the tree’s reply to it. Timothy Donnelly’s long poem Hymn to Life behaves similarly, but instead of the tree, it’s the past, and the force, rather than being the wind, is life. Topping out at sixty stanzas, un-serialized, populated by facts pulled from natural history with digressive little reveries into pop-culture, biography, antiquity, and personal anecdote, the intrinsic spirit of Hymn to Life – perhaps one of the best long poems written in recent memory – is sympathy