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     Douglas Dunn’s use of quatrains rhyming abba throughout The Donkey’s Ears establishes both a formidable formal structure and the obstructions for the collection to founder on. Over 170 pages, Dunn presents us with Flag-Engineer Politovsky’s imaginary letters in verse to his wife, as his Russian fleet heads towards disaster at the battle of Tsushima (which means ‘the Donkey’s Ears’ in Japanese) in May 1905.

     What interests me about the work is Dunn’s interweaving of elements that relate not only to the engineer’s life aboard ship, but those that have relevance also to the life of a writer. The ocean, for instance, is

Devoted to slow anger and against
Inhibited, controlled, and too-much-fenced
Forms of the world, or active solitude.

Politovsky takes pride in being a man who loves “boilers, machines, and common spanners” but this does not preclude him writing secret verses to his wife – the latter is Dunn’s literary invention, and prerogative. In so doing, Dunn, the craftsman, constructs a watertight narrative of rhyme and metre, but pages of wearisome detail are relieved only with the occasional jaunty expression: “I had my French beer and, indeed, drank three!” One also has to scour this lengthy volume for those isolated passages that add depth to the work: connecting with the art of writing; concerning the struggle between logistics and the irrational; or exploring issues of identity and destiny.

     The form as it is expressed here is a tedious, if well-wrought way of encapsulating a story. The monotony also arises from the subject matter. Of course, Dunn is allowing us to share the thoughts of Politovsky, but the potential intimacy is hindered by the need to spell out each step of the historical drama unfolding – a result of the extensive research, the hours spent reading books from libraries and institutes credited in the acknowledgements perhaps. While respecting and admiring a scholarly and technically robust approach to history, the reader is likely to conclude that the human drama holds the most appeal. The issues of responsibility to love, and to huwar, the polar opposites of action and contemplation, as well as the question of personal and private identity; all of these can be relevant to the reader, but such areas emerge infrequently through relentless shipping details. 

     I don’t doubt the hard graft behind the writing, but the effort is undercut by Politovksy himself: “Enough of metaphor! That stuff’s for toffs.” An ambiguity surrounds the worthiness of poetry. Later, the engineer can talk of a moment in relation to machinery which is allied to the poet’s engagement with feeling. He can sense “the pause/ Beginning in my blood as beat by beat/ My blood slows...”. He knows a stillness such

As no other than an engineer
Can understand, someone like me, whose ear
Makes sense of sleeping boilers.

To be clear, however: it is necessary to wade through musings on trade and officialdom, static isolated episodes of queueing for postage stamps at the latest port of call, and so on, in order to find these fragments. My ear is often delighted by the assured rhythm, the ease of expression through rhyme – then I pause to reflect, wondering what I’m absorbing. How many cigarettes the crew are smoking, how much they’re drinking, Politovsky’s beard getting longer and more unruly, until he has to have it shaved off... no wonder, in part XXXV of Part Five, Politovksky’s wife sends a one-word telegram back, that simply says: “Well”. 

     Dunn’s fluency and gift for tenderness within formal structures are evident throughout The Donkey’s Ears. But the sheer length of the journey should leave the reader with various profundities, or resonances, to fuel one’s imaginative interest. Dunn’s adept rhymes, his surprising turns of phrase, are an ongoing textual display, but they don’t create an overall mood or atmosphere. It’s a long haul: the journey is detailed, but lacks adventure; the navigation is assured, but uninspired. In addition, I find it difficult to be convinced by these “letters” through the artificiality of their construct.

     The philosophical musings by Politovsky on the wider scale, concerning the “raped, colonial planet” and  the “colossal pointlessness” of war, for instance, also do not have the breadth of vision, the originality of insight, to make them anything more than historical references. As regards the provisions on board ship, “coal, ammunition, soap, and groceries”, history, Politovsky says, is “A matter of such boring details”. That may be, but this is a creative endeavour.

     The detail does become vivid, when the focus is more personal, as when Politovsky drinks lemonade while suffering the humidity of Madagascar, and contrasts this with “deep snows/ Or the winter-scent of a coffee-pot/ On a stove”. His longing for his wife emerges through “such wolves of time” but then returns to facts: “Forty-two ships of ours now languish here/ At Nossi-Bé”. A startling phrase relieves the tone when Politovksy describes tobacco as a “constant hummingbird/ Across my brain”. These transitions serve as an apt snapshot of the collection as a whole: personal expressions of love and longing; historical reportage; descriptive flourish. When personal expression is contrasted with life on board ship, or complaints are made about the strategies of Tsars and Admirals, I sense that Dunn has difficulties. The problem is of authenticity – as long as Dunn can relate love and hope to his own known experience, then the phrases and expressions are believable.

     Unfortunately, the formal rhyme scheme leads to over-writing.  A passage which illustrates this opens in an immediate and succinct way, before the narrative progress is burdened:

I get that scent of somewhere else again,
Our apartment. It’s a fragrance of us,
Our clothes, our soap, us, and our amorousness
In days before this world without women.

It comes out of the blue – literal blue,
Tropical blue. I can be rowed across
Oceanic swell to a near dead-loss
Mechanical failure when scents of you

Smite me while I sit oilskinned at the prow...

The simplicity of the opening passage is occasionally found again, enriched with rhythm: “It began to rain –/ That gentle tap of rain-drops on tarpaulins”. Such simple phrases lend immediacy, and bring love to life: “a coffee-stain/ On a page’s corner, a fallen hair,/ The distant scent of one who isn’t there.” When metaphor is similarly exact and natural, cumbersome philosophy makes way for meanings resonant through imagery:

                      I read you now by candlelight
Over and over. The insected fan
Whisks miniature lives in a buzzing cloud
That is my muffled, mouthless mind made loud
And multiple, the mind of lonely man

At his devotions...