“These poems echo, reverberate with meaning, and give us new perception, insights into the world we inhabit. Offering us the consolation of an intelligent human spirit who speaks of everything that flails at his heart, Davis struggles with the darkness and is not broken. The poems show us not only that we must not look away from the world, from its terror, but that we also must not ignore its ravishing beauty. His poems teach our hearts to persevere.” Vivian Shipley “These are poems that think and wonder and yes, by God, that pray. They do so with a cosmopolitan tongue and a formal sense acutely measured against the expansive possibilities of the poet’s intellect and spirit. Brad Davis is a storyteller, has a marvelous touch with detail, and can be awfully funny. He’s also that most rare thing: a poet with a profoundly moral vision who can plumb the richness of experience, both public and private, as it is cast against the inscrutables. The motto implicit in these poems? “Not merely to describe (beautifully) nor to tell (deftly) the tale, but (as in the Biblical sense) to reveal.” Clare Rossini Brad Davis is from San Diego, California. He has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has taught at The Stony Brook School (NY), Eastern Connecticut State University, the College of the Holy Cross (MA), and Pomfret School (CT) where he was the founding editor of Broken Bridge Review and the Broken Bridge Folio Series. His own poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, DoubleTake, Image, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tar River Poetry, Connecticut Review, Puerto del Sol, Ascent, and other journals. In 1995, a poem of his won an AWP Intro Journal Award; in 2005, his chapbook Short List of Wonders won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize (selected by Dick Allen); and in 2009, a poem of his won the IAM (International Arts Movement) Poetry Award (selected by Brett Lott). Brad is married to Deb; they have a son John who lives with his wife Mariko in Brooklyn (NY). The Antrim House seminar room offers notes, issues for discussion, and writing assignments. Click here to attend the seminar on Song of the Drunkards. Click here to read a major review of all four books in the Opening King David series, published in the journal Christianity & Literature, Summer 2009. Click here to read six sample poems. For other books in the Opening King David series, see the Antrim House catalog. |
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BOOK STATISTICS ISBN: 978-0-9770633-5-2
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These things I remember. Psalm 42:4
What she read to us from her journal a week before Every Thursday after supper, she and Bill drop by and listen for God’s voice in the stillness of Scripture. call God sightings. Sometimes we laugh so hard Bill has taken a leave of absence from work to care as a deer pants for streams of water, that sort of thing. than what follows a slow walk in the woods, a month of whatever time it may take for a long bath, longer That Thursday, Bill sat with her on the couch, eyes closed. |
You no longer go out with our armies.
Four slow decades on, |
He lifts his voice, the earth melts.
students lie out like soldiers in a field Last week, we buried a young alumnus. and grabbed my arm, the sudden of grief, that old impassivity |
May the Gentiles be glad and sing for joy. Psalm 67:3
make a royal mess of my cynicism, for this would be salvation to me, tired will know of it, the rocks and fields will stringed instrumentation: a psalm, a song |
From the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. Psalm 71:20
In cracks between other rocks, we hid the first You always loved the feel of flat rocks and arcing flight toward distant targets. In our teens at the reservoir, we jumped the rocks you, by then a college freshman, on the summit of Blackcombe three- centimeters of new snow again rocks Some days I imagine it’s where you’ve gone: and set your tent forever there, in that gathered |
Endow the king with your justice, O God. Psalm 72:1
Pray for the emperor. Wouldn’t be so bad Pray for the emperor’s advisors. One side of me wants the empire Pray for Babylon; as she prospers, we prosper. But my notion of prosperity differs and so there is another side of me Yes, pray for the emperor’s soul |
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