Todd Davis (2)

[from back cover, quote by Julia Kasdorf] Here are surprisingly plain-spoken poems of place and the middle of a man's life hung on the horns of the millennium. This book speaks from silent spaces--forests and struggling family farms, inarticulate anger and raw fear. Subject matters here and the language is necessarily transactional, haunted by all kinds of violence though never totally without hope. As such, these poems will be of use in our troubled times, like the "Snow Angels," which Davis describes, that vanish "like a blessing to be endured."… (mere)

[from back cover, quote by Julia Kasdorf] "Todd Davis is an American poet who follows Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, and James Wright in subject and style; yet the fields, forests, and Midwestern small towns of which he writes are infused with Davis's own faith. Here is faith in the rhythms of nature, in the continuity of familiar connection, and in the inevitable cycles of transgression and grace... These poems seem to confess a faith in faith itself, written with a clarity that betrays the author's believe in the ability of language to carry all our imperfect meanings."… (mere)