SOURCE: Donahue, Joseph. “Sprung Polity: On Nathaniel Mackey's Recent Work.” Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, no. 9 (fall 1992): 62-5.

In the following essay, Donahue offers general commentary on Mackey's first volumes of poetry.

                                                  the initiation of another kind of nation 

—Charles Olson

Nathaniel Mackey's first book of poems, Eroding Witness, set before us a range of ritual roles and described the occasional players who filled them. In doing so the poet demonstrated his commitment to the liberating power of ecstatic song. Shaman, musician, gris-gris dancer, each appeared at the point where in filling a role he or she eluded the constraints of the role. But the poet, it seemed, was banned from the ecstasy of the figures he imagined. Craving the erosion of his own alienation, the poet, the medium of the mediums, could not neglect the complications of his witness.

To pursue the most pressing...