In Granted, Jeffery Donaldson explores ‘a universe of potential relation’, providing a master class in the art of metaphor by exploring in verse the complexities of identity, perception, and meaning.
Metaphor is the substance of things hoped for and the proof of things not seen. It is a building block, not a tower or its view. It is a gift impossible to guess, and not to be opened until you do. Metaphor is coinage dropped so that others might decipher us.
The poems in Jeffery Donaldson’s Granted serve as a sort of Metaphor 101, an education in the making of metaphor, its motives and its meaning. But more than that, these poems represent a study of being—and of becoming. They make relations, correspondences, attachments, and in so doing, they investigate the gaps between identity and imagination, truth and perception, love and faith. As Donaldson reminds us, when it comes to metaphor, distance makes no difference: it ‘breathes / in impossible spots, pairs that can’t be, / and finds in them untold possibilities.’