2024: Asterisms (Harbour Publishing, Spring 2024)
Reviews:
March 2024, Asterisms: “Asterisms is a well-integrated collection in which the poems are connected to each other thematically as well as formally, often using “weaving” patterns of repetition into the verse. Moreover, these finely-crafted poems are engaging to read, often highly informative and insightful with their call to love and embrace nature as part of the larger cosmos.” The British Columbia Review
March 2024, Asterisms: “Kane has a clarity and calm, cut with a passion that I find appealing. Neither pat and expected nor so far strange as to be random, she leans into questioning and observing, filtering the external with something that doesn’t feel like a foregone conclusion of profound. … Part of the appeal is the dispassionate focus and vision. Kane doesn’t mire and kvetch. She doesn’t go in for humorous deflection but if something is comic it is not banal.” Miramachi Reader
February 2024, Asterisms: “Kane is writing at the true peak of lyric intensity here, her ear honed, her curiosity about everything from the Artemis program to frogs to the Incredible Hulk evidenced in pieces that explore depths in small spaces of language and feeling. ” Marrow Reviews
2020: Orrery (Harbour Publishing, Fall 2020)
Finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award
Reviews:
September 2021, Orrery: ” … Donna Kane uncovers truths about humankind that make living on earth appear just as dazzling, wondrous, and nebulous as a trip through the cosmos. ” Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review
August 2021, Orrery: “Orrery offers a rich drift through space, Northern B.C., and the mind that makes the perception of such things possible. Like a space documentary narrated by Carl Sagan, the book is guided by a sharp wonder that urges gratitude for any and all time
spent in the presence of stars.” Malahat Review Issue 215 Summer, 2021
February 2021: “I love how these poems muscle out what it’s like being human in the world. Each is a story of discovery, whether sensory or metaphysical. They’re stunning.” Seeking Certainty in Uncertain Worlds (49thshelf.com)
January 2021: “I can’t say enough good about it. I loved her previous book and was ecstatic/anxious to see that she had made another. This one exceeds the last. I read this twice. There’s something to the phrasing, the rhythms, the subjects, the world attitude. It delighted me.” Pesto Blog
December 2020: “A quietly brilliant collection of poems which includes a fascinating series on the travels of Pioneer 10, a space probe launched in 1972 which carried on far beyond expectations and was, with some regret, retired in 2003 “when NASA stopped sending signals to it, leaving it to wander alone through deep space.” Poignant, philosophical, and so very well-written, this slim volume deserves major attention. It is a small wonder/wander of a book. A gem.” Caroline Woodward
December 2020 “I’ve been waiting 13 years for Donna Kane’s next book and I’m relieved to be not disappointed. Her ideas and metaphors are exciting and fresh, “catkins sealed inside/hulls that shine like polished caskets,/like taxidermy eyes” (p.38). Her mind is alert, moving among all the magnitudes from a dull fly spinning on its back to Jupiter to gaps between one person’s inner life and another. She goes deeper and more dexterous in her already vivid phrasing. The poems are not sentimental, not blunt, but inquiring, measuring, testing the ground of words, avoiding confirmation bias or pat answers, but delving into sharp observation.” 49th Shelf 2020 Poetic Delights
September 2020: “Kane is a modern metaphysical poet … the honed lyrics in Orrery feel mostly like genuine, real, human movements of awe and listening in the face of space and death and biology and time. And this, as a pursuit, constitutes the necessary core of poetry.” Marrow Reviews
2018: Summer of the Horse: Non-Fiction (Harbour Publishing)
Reviews:
Spring 2019: “At the heart of everything is mystery, Kane reminds us. And that mystery is itself a kind of beauty, much like the wilderness. In Summer of the Horse, she takes us on an unsentimental, honest, and contemplative ride to the wildest outposts of the heart, and leaves us with a sense of wonder.” – The Malahat Review
Autumn 2018: “For those who already appreciate Kane’s verse, this book will be a delight.” – Canadian Literature
Autumn 2018: “[A] thoughtful, and sometimes lyrical, account of a complex life.” – The Fiddlehead
Vol. 8 #80: “A memoir? To be sure, but it’s also much more — a paean to the outdoors, a plea for the environment, a chronicle of several layers of healing. Heck, it’s even a darn good love story.” – SubTerrain
June 2018: “Kane’s poetic voice shines in her prose” – Library Journal
June 2018: “A quiet classic of a book… .” – Caroline Woodward
June, 2018: “Summer of the Horse is full of the risks of entering new terrain. There’s a healing of wounds, a beautiful honesty, and a sense of celebration and accomplishment … ” – Story Circle Book Reviews
May, 2018: “Summer of the Horse comes at an opportune and important moment as more and more wilderness areas in northeastern British Columbia – and indeed across the province — give way to roads, industry, and settlement. This intimate book speaks to the way we can be changed and shaped by wilderness and in the process reminds us of the importance of keeping such areas as wild as possible.” – The Ormsby Review
April, 2018: “The language digs by nail and tooth past personal artifice down to the root of individual purpose—the voice that tells us what we’re supposed to be; or at least where we should look.” – Miguel Eichelberger
April, 2018: “Summer of the Horse promises to entrance and enliven. It’s a rich draught from a deep well. Sip it slowly.” BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly
2016: Pioneer 10, I Hear You (JackPine Press)
Reviews:
“Jack Pine typically produces uniquely-covered chapbooks, and they, Donna Kane, and designers kit fast and mary mottishaw have raised the bar with this one.” – Scott Bryson, Broken Pencil Magazine (October 2017)
“Depiction of a Man and a Woman on the Pioneer 10 Space Probe Plaque” makes Vehicule Press’ 10 Most Popular Sunday Poems of 2014 (January 2015).
2007: Erratic (Hagios Press)
Reviews:
“With Erratic, Kane has produced a second book of confident poetry – rhythmically engaging, rhetorically dexterous, saturated with listening… .” – The Fiddlehead (Spring 2009)
“She’s done it again, and so have they. Hats off to poet Donna Kane, keen observer of the eccentricities of moths, bees, and of that veritable funhouse – the human heart – and to her publisher Hagios Press for once again recognizing the quietly brilliant work of this Dawson Creek area poet, and for packaging it so attractively.” – Saskatchewan Publishers Group (April, 2008)
“Here’s a brain that sits on the balance of absorbing beauty and keeps cynicism. It has no excess.” – Poetry Springs Boing (February, 2008)
“These poems turn the heart out of doors into a wondrous world.” – Star Phoenix, Saskatoon (January 2008)
“Kane makes small details bloom large, and this makes us want to slow down and see what she sees.” – Times Colonist, Victoria (January 2008)
2004: Somewhere, a Fire
Hagios Press
Reviews:
“There is something unsettling about Donna Kane’s first poetry collection, Somewhere a Fire. The book is a surprising read: like the most interesting small towns. It is at once charming and menacing.” – Arc Poetry Magazine (Summer 2006)
“… a very fine [collection] it is. With skilful tension, Kane thrusts the reader northwards into early snowfalls, mud, and dust devils.” – BC Bookworld (Autumn 2005)
“Donna Kane makes even the word “hubcap” delectable. Her tactile lines unearth solid truths with an exactness bred of close familiarity.”
– Linda Besner, The Dominion (Spring 2005)
“Somewhere, a Fire is a remarkable debut … polished and startling.”
– Event (Spring 2005)
“This collection is enormously skilful. Form and content are integral to one another, melded so as to become one thing. But what strikes me above all is the integrity of the voice, its determined honesty.”
– Sue Sinclair, The Fiddlehead (Spring 2005)
“…highly-crafted poems with refreshing rural-feminist ironies…“
– Canadian Booksellers (December 2004)
“Reading Somewhere, a Fire, the first collection by Donna Kane is an unexpected delight. Kane manages to make the leap from concrete details of her northern British Columbia environment to abstraction and transcendent thoughts seemingly without effort. … Wait for Kane’s second collection, but while you’re waiting, read this one.”
– Alison Calder, Winnipeg Free Press print edition (May 23, 2004)