Brad Davis*

Brad Davis is a Connecticut poet and the author of four full-length collections. His new book On the Way to Putnam: new, selected, & early poems (Grayson Books), appearing May 8th, is a summation of his career to this point.

His previous books from which this new volume draws poems include: Opening King David (2011, Emerald City), and Still Working It Out (2014) and Trespassing on the Mount of Olives (2021) which are both from Cascade Books and the Poiema Poetry Series.

Sydney Lea, Poet Laureate of Vermont (2011—2015), said of Brad Davis’s poetry in the forward:
-----“What happens for me is a strong measure of spiritual refreshment.
-----Davis never professes simple faith, but wrestles with
-----countervailing impulses, ‘the darkness and sorrow in our hearts.’
-----Over the span of his sustained and sustaining vocation, no matter
-----all the world’s deep defects—posturing and deceptions of late
-----capitalist powers, widespread war, starvation, bigotry, hypocrisy,
-----and plain callousness—for him a cautious optimism and an incautious
-----joie de vivre and delight in the natural world prevail.”

The following poem, clearly set during our experience of Covid, is from On the Way to Putnam: new, selected, & early poems (Grayson Books). This is it’s first appearance.

Sunday News

-----Psalm 24:1

After two days of heavy rain
along the Natchaug, Diana’s Pool
(named, some say, for a suicide)
was all aboil. We arrived at noon
hoping for the whitewater kayakers
we’d heard wait for such water.
But either it was too early

in the season, or the first arrivals
deemed it too dangerous and
pushed out a note to the network
of other crazies we went out to see.
So we settled for a leisurely negative
ion fix, witnessing the happiest
water south and west of Putnam.

Happiest, that is, until we returned
to town where our Quinebaug
over Cargill Falls was roiling
like a Pentecostal congregation
in the grip of a Holy Ghost anointing.
Even the Little River was feeling it,
a little. And so today, though oil

prices climb and stocks tumble
and the virus claims another few
thousand, the joyful spring waters
amped by heavy rain preach
our homily, giving voice to an old
story that’s a rollicking antidote
for all the recent woes of the world.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Philip Metres

Philip Metres is an American poet of Lebanese descent who is active in the Arab-American literary scene. He is a professor of English and Director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.

America magazine has composed a video about Metres and his work, (available on his website) where the poet quotes the phrase in Isaiah 50 ― “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue that I might speak to the weary a word that will rouse them.” He then continues, “When I read that I thought that’s what I want to do…that’s…the mission...of being a writer...to wake us up to the mystery and miracle of what it means to be alive.”

The most recent of his five poetry collections is Shrapnel Maps (2020, Copper Canyon). He has also translated book-length collections by Russian poets Arseny Tarkovsky, Lev Rubinstein and Sergey Gandlevsky. The following poem first appeared in Poetry magazine, and is from his collection Sand Opera (2015, Alice James).

Compline

That we await a blessed hope, & that we will be struck
With great fear, like a baby taken into the night, that every boot,
Every improvised explosive, Talon & Hornet, Molotov
& rubber-coated bullet, every unexploded cluster bomblet,
Every Kevlar & suicide vest & unpiloted drone raining fire
On wedding parties will be burned as fuel in the dark season.
That we will learn the awful hunger of God, the nerve-fraying
Cry of God, the curdy vomit of God, the soiled swaddle of God,
The constant wakefulness of God, alongside the sweet scalp
Of God, the contented murmur of God, the limb-twitched dream-
Reaching of God. We’re dizzy in every departure, limb-lost.
We cannot sleep in the wake of God, & God will not sleep
The infant dream for long. We lift the blinds, look out into ink
For light. My God, my God, open the spine binding our sight.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by my friend Brad Davis.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Brad Davis*

Brad Davis is the author of three poetry collections: Opening King David (2011), Still Working It Out (2014), and his new book Trespassing On the Mount of Olives (Poiema/Cascade, 2021). Similar to how his first book consisted of poems in conversation with the Psalms, his new book’s poems are in conversation with the gospels. He has taught creative writing at the College of the Holy Cross, Eastern Connecticut State University, The Stony Brook School, and Pomfret School, where he served as school chaplain.

Marjorie Maddox has said of this new collection, “…Through persona poems and first-person narratives, the contemporary and biblical intersect with insight and humor. . . . What follows are spiritual and social examinations: ‘How to clear out a self from a self,’ how to protect the environment, how to face doubt and mortality, and, ultimately, how to ‘do whatever he tells you,’ even if that means, according to Davis, writing poems. Thank God for the latter.”

I am honoured to be the editor of the Poiema Poetry Series, and to have worked with Brad Davis on both Still Working It Out, and Trespassing On the Mount of Olives.

The following poem first appeared in Ekstasis, and is from his new poetry book.

The Generative Influence of Q on John’s Gospel

Luke 5:1–11

The fragment is on the mark.
Whoever wrote it down got it right,
and I should know.
From a boat offshore,
my younger self watched it happen:
the crowd pressing upon the Teacher
as he taught on the beach;
he commandeering Peter’s boat
and telling him to put out into deep water;
we rolling our eyes
when he instructed Peter to let down his net,
yet then having to help him land
that crazy haul of fish;
and finally back on the beach, the Teacher
announcing, From now on, you will catch men.
Ever since it was entrusted to me,
I have treasured this fragment,
holding it as first among the other fragments
I keep rolled in a scrap of leather.
And there’s a new reason I hold it dear.
Early last Sabbath, the rains dampening
my eagerness for eldership here in Ephesus,
I unrolled the fragment
to refresh my sense of commissioning—
you will catch men—
when suddenly the words
turned themselves inside out
and I became dizzy, like that day
in the upper room with the Spirit-fire.
Suddenly the crowd on the beach
listening to Jesus teach the word of God
became a crowd on a beach
listening to God.
I felt myself melt, as if into a glorious light.
Then later in the day words occurred to me—
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was—
along with a compulsion
to write them down
and follow them with other words.
And it was as though I were once again
following Jesus up some rocky path
between small towns on the way to Jerusalem.
I’m telling this to all of you
because the idea these words convey
will be called blasphemous.
I may suffer for having written them.
But I know and trust their source,
and when I’m done they must
be sent around to all the Teacher’s friends.
Which makes me nervous
how even they will receive them,
for none of the others have spoken as plainly
of the Teacher in this way—
as the great I AM. So I have awakened you,
the moon still bright above the city,
because I want you to sit with me and pray
as I write what I will write.
You know how tired I become by early afternoon,
and how I have needed your help
shepherding our little flock here in Ephesus.
Well, now I will need you even more
to help complete the new work. Please,
someone bring me my pen, ink, and parchment.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: first post, second post, fourth post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Brad Davis*

Brad Davis is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Opening King David, and his new book, Still Working It Out. He is a counselor and poetry writing teacher at the Promfret School in Connecticut. His poetry has appeared in such journals as Image, The Paris Review, Poetry and Spiritus. I have been very fortunate to have edited Still Working It Out with Brad for the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books.

Poet Margaret Gibson has said of this book, "Brad Davis has mastered the art of presenting the ordinary moment with all its stunning strangeness. Reading these poems, we become mindful that we live by mystery, by beauty, and by grace."

The following is the title poem from his new collection:

Still Working It Out

for Robin Needham, killed in the 2004 Christmas tsunami

Something
shuddered in the un-

fathomable dark, and a wave
shouldered forth

like an eighteen wheeler
skidding sideways

into oncoming traffic—a wave
inhering by the power

of a word lovely
as snow on a navy sleeve,

the same word
that shuddered in each

dark cell of the dead
Christ, a wave shouldering forth

like a new heaven, new
earth, clearing away

the old, the impossible—a wave,
a word, terrible as it is

great, great as it is holy
and terrible.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: first post, third post, fourth post.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Brad Davis

Brad Davis is the winner of the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and the International Arts Movement Poetry Prize. He has lived in the west — British Columbia and Washington State — seven different states in the east, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has also taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and at Eastern Connecticut State University.

He is the author of Opening King David, published by Wipf & Stock in 2011. It is a series of 150 poems which respond to, or leap from, thoughts expressed in the 150 biblical psalms. These poems previously appeared in four separate volumes, published by Antrim House Publishers. Although these poems often speak of faith, this is not a collection of devotional verse. Opening King David shows us Davis on his journey, with fellow-travelers — including his close friend Bill who experiences his wife’s slow dying through the time these poems were written. Scott Cairns has said of this book, “Brad Davis has pored over both the scriptures and our common experience...that we might glimpse how every challenge, every adversity might be met with grace.”

Reasons I Write

Those who assume they have no one
to whom they must account for their words—

like politicians, bankers, older brothers,
theologians, poets, headmasters—

they are wrong. Every knee will bow, every
tongue confess. So I do not use words

like “shit” or “Sovereign Lord” unaware.
Berryman, after Hopkins, wrote truly:

that line about Christ being the only
just critic. I write because it takes little

to spark my rage, and Saint Paul said we must
toil with our hands for the end of anger

is murder, and if any would be saved,
they must, with fear and trembling, work it out.


This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: second post, third post, fourth post.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca