The Donkey's Ears - Softcover

Dunn, Douglas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571204260 ISBN 13: 9780571204267

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2000

A wonderfully sustained narrative poem, full of the resonances and repercussions attendant on the end of an era, The Donkey's Ears depicts life aboard a Russian flagship just before the battle of Tsushima, 1905. It purports to be written by E.S. Politovsky, a ship's engineer addressing his wife in letters back home. Known as 'The Trafalgar of the East', Tsushima (which, translated from the Japanese, means 'The Donkey's Ears' - a description of the twin peaks of the islands) was the biggest naval gun-battle in history. The action of the poem takes place before the battle. A vividly realized claustrophobia prevails. Life below and on deck is brilliantly detailed as is the sense of incipient doom; one man's voice (domestic, particular, yearning for wife and home comforts) pitched against the inexorable onslaught of events.

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Review:

The Donkey's Ears is everything modern poetry should be: clever, lyrical, accessible, enlightening. It tells, in mildly formalised rhyme and metre, the fascinating story of the Russian Baltic fleet, that set sail from Saint Petersburg in 1905 and voyaged half way round the world, only to be crushed a year later by the Japanese Imperial navy at the battle of Tsushima.

The "narrator" is Flag Engineer Eugene Politovsky, a science-officer aboard the flagship Suvorov. He was to die on deck at the outset of the battle. Douglas Dunn has culled the facts and tenor of Eugene's letters home to his much-missed wife--which in poeticised form comprise this book--from a posthumous 1906 volume about Politovsky and the fleet, called Lubin to Tsushima (the latter name means "donkey's ears", in Japanese).

The brilliance of Dunn's achievement is the way he spins such a lushly coloured, authentically textured narrative tapestry from his basic material. Whether Dunn/Politovsky is describing the fleet's overlong anchorage in the torpor of Madagascar: "...day by day demoralising heat settles on languid card-games. Flaking Paint. Unpolished brass. Coal everywhere." The simple beauty of sailing under Iberian skies: "Nocturnal clearings and Hispanic stars, The asterisks of God." Or dealing with officer-toffs and their attitude problems: "I've had enough of Admiralty blah, Corruption, bribes, stupidity, mistakes," he conveys the fetid atmosphere of the fated navy with charm, verve and no little beauty.--Sean Thomas

About the Author:

Douglas Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, in 1942 and lived there until he married at the age of twenty-two. After working as a librarian in Scotland and Akron, Ohio, he studied English at Hull University, graduating in 1969. He then worked for eighteen months in the university library after which, in 1971, he became a freelance writer. In 1991 he was appointed Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. As well as ten collections of poetry, including Elegies (1985), The Year's Afternoon, The Donkey's Ears (both 2000), and New Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2003), Douglas Dunn has written several radio and television plays, including Ploughman's Share and Scotsman by Moonlight. He has also edited various anthologies, including Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2006). Douglas Dunn has won a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and has twice been awarded prizes by the Scottish Arts Council. In 1981 he was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for St Kilda's Parliament. In January 1986 he was overall winner of the 1985 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for his collection Elegies.

Douglas Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire in 1942, and was Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. As well as over ten collections of poetry - including Elegies (1985), which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and New Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2003) - he has written several radio and television plays and edited various anthologies, including Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2006). He was awarded an OBE in 2003 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2013.

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