These are post-9/11 poems examining such issues as the Holocaust, the prison scandals in Iraq, and other human rights violations.

Written as the war on terror morphed into an imperial war, Donatello's Version carries on the public poetry tradition of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Horace, Juvenal, Dante, Milton, Blake, and others. These poems arise from the premise that words matter, that the res publica (the human value that individuals in a community place above their own self-interest) also matters, and that the voice of the poet can make a difference.

In Donatello's Version, post-9/11 reality is re-viewed through Hamlet, Donatello's David, Lazarus, and Coltrane. Rather than being a poetry collection of answers, this is a poetry collection of questions, impasses, and revelations.