Nearly any time a fan writes about Donaghy's work, some version of the phrase "what makes him different..." comes up. I'd have to look back, but I'm pretty sure I committed the cliche in both of my posts so far. But he's not the first poet to create personae, dramatic or otherwise (Pessoa, Pound, Eliot, Browning, Tennyson, Robinson, Masters, Spenser, Chaucer, Frost,....) While I don't think he would claim to be sui generis, sometimes it seems that, critically, he is treated as such. And that can be annoying.
Some of the same qualities I admire in his work are also what tire me of it after a while. In a less accommodating mood, his wisecracks don't do it for me ("I put the tenor in the vehicle...") I can tire of all those strange, often dusty and dingy artifacts of his, the claude glass being the first example that comes to mind. The sex, drugs, and bad soul get old. So, no, I don't think he's perfect, but he is a poet I keep returning to. And I'm always interested in the counter-argument to my tastes, if only to better understand why I have them. So I hope to hear more.
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