Donnelly is a poet, editor, and teacher. His first book of poems is The Charge. In this essay, Donnelly interprets "The Satyr's Heart" in the context of the collection The Orchard as a whole.

"The Satyr's Heart" demonstrates every characteristic of a lyric poem, the mode of poetry whose purpose is primarily to express strong feeling:

language and sensual images that are emotionally resonant; implications which gesture toward meaning, without spelling everything out; associative leaps that may not make logical sense, but are linked by a through-line of language, image, or feeling; "musical" language: that is, sounds and rhythms that pitch their appeal primarily to human faculties other than the intellect or the logical mind.

It's the lyric strategy of "implications which gesture toward meaning" that usually presents the biggest challenge to beginning students of poetry. Why does not Kelly (or her "speaker") come right out and...