30 Days of 19, Poems by Donovan Hufnagle

Donovan Hufnagle's "Naigai ni Haiku" poems represent daily, spontaneous snapshots and conversational observations; they look outside from in, while also resonating the inside out. The structure of the poem is an inversion of a haiku. Each poem contains three lines and each line has a syllable length of 7-5-7. In juxtaposition to the poems, Donovan recycled one of President Trump's tweets as well as the total Covid 19 cases and deaths in the United States from that same day.

Sample Poems by Donovan Hufnagle

Praise for the Author's Work

"It's often said that great art arrives at the intersection of experience, imagination, and discovery. Or maybe I'm the only one who says that. It's still true. In The Sunshine Special Donovan Hufnagle combines these elements and others to create an art document that defies conventional description. I'm reminded of the powerful work of James Agee in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, or Phillip Levine's gritty elegies to the working class of America. Part personal narrative, epic poem, and historical artifact, this book re-creates a timeless American story with sincerity, courage, and grit. It is a love letter to the past, real and imagined, with surprises on every page."-Matt Bondurant, author ofThe Third Translation, The Wettest County in the World or Lawless, and The Night Swimmer

"Culled and conjured from an ancestral archive, these epistolary and daybook poems trace one man's travel from Texas to California in 1920 as well as his decision to leave the family home and business. 'I read somewhere that American men/ have no history of themselves as men-as we haven't known what questions to ask, ' the narrator muses. And yet Donovan Hufnagle's The Sunshine Special poses many important questions about the myth of the American west and its relation to American masculinity in a sustained poetic inquiry that unspools against a strangely gendered landscape of both aridness and promise."-Susan Briante, author of Defacing the Monument, The Market Wonders, Utopia Minus, and Pioneers in the Study of Motion

"The Sunshine Special is a brilliant and well-constructed rendering of the poet's search for his familial past. In a series of tender correspondences, and collective memories, Hufnagle sutures together a compelling narrative that elevates archive to high art. A fantastic and rare kind of book I cannot recommend enough."-Tim Z. Hernandez, author ofAll They Will Call You, Mañana Means Heaven, and Natural Take Over of Small Things

ISBN 9781625493880, 42 pages

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