An Olio of Poems

An Olio of Poems is an expansive and eclectic collection by Christina J. Donato and Ralph A. Walton, organized into nine thematic sections that range from lighthearted reminiscences about dogs and favorite foods to sobering meditations on depression, faith, social justice, and the passage of time. The book opens with accessible poems about beloved pets, transitions into playful celebrations of culinary delights, and then plunges into the raw depths of mental health struggles. Midway, the tone shifts to spiritual musings, where Christian faith and gratitude are foregrounded, before moving on to poems probing issues of race, class, and identity. Donato experiments with classical forms—sonnets, limericks, and concrete poems—before closing with personal reflections, family tributes, and, finally, a suite of poems by Walton, whose voice brings a grittier, more existential perspective to the collection. Donato’s style is marked by its conversational clarity and deliberate simplicity, making her poetry highly accessible even when addressing sensitive themes.

I was thrilled by the imagery in this collection. In “A Walking Day,” the dog’s perspective animates the world with sensory delight— “There’s a tree. There’s a pole. There’s a bush. There’s a hole! / There’s some poop. There’s a rock. Look over there – it’s someone’s sock!”—capturing the exuberant, scattershot curiosity of canine life. The playful concrete poem “Ice Cream” not only shapes its verses into a scoop and cone, but also evokes the universal joy of the treat: “I cannot cry when eating ice cream. I don’t feel sad and blue.” In the collection’s darker moments, Donato captivates with stark imagery; in “Another Day,” the ache of isolation is distilled into, “No one cared I was alive today. / And if tomorrow I deem to be / The day that I die, / No one would even notice...” The poem “I Painted Myself” uses repetition and harsh racial slurs to shocking effect, culminating in the poignant line, “I washed off the paint just the other day, / To see what my father would say. / ‘Daughter, Daughter, where have you been?’” Her religious poems are rich with metaphor, as in “The Lord Sends Rain,” where life’s blessings and trials are entwined with the natural world. Walton’s poems, meanwhile, bring a more fragmented and existential imagery, as in “Psychasthenia”: “Sweet darkness came to erase me / Horrors and cruelty came to embrace me.” Collectively, the book’s imagery—from the mundane (a dog sniffing a sock) to the existential (the ache of being unseen, the embrace of darkness)—grounds the reader in both the specificity of lived experience and the universality of human longing.  The poems in An Olio of Poems form not just a miscellany, but a canvas of lived experience—by turns whimsical, wrenching, spiritual, and socially incisive.