Opening King David [Hardcover]

The human experience is an intimate, tough, and, at times, hilarious conversation with what is familiar and what is mystery. Poetry at its best turns this conversation into art and teaches by example how to employ language creatively and courageously--even coyly--in exploring the full range of human response to whatever life may deliver. Certainly the biblical Psalms set the highest of standards in this regard. In Opening King David, Davis takes aim at making contemporary poems in conversation with the Psalms; his personal, cultural, and natural surroundings; and the wonder and mess of his own soul. As a painter with all colors at his disposal, Davis writes with the full spectrum of his available vocabulary, sometimes reaching for the glorious ineffable, at other times bluntly telling it like it--darkly--is. Neither devotional nor inspirational nor religious, these human poems take God seriously and honor our common struggle toward what Saint Paul calls --the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.-- --Like a Rabbi opening the sacred text, then toiling further yet to open every word therein, Brad Davis has pored over both the scriptures and our common circumstance to prod, to raise our wits, that we might glimpse how every challenge, every adversity might be met with grace.-- --Scott Cairns author of Compass of Affection Brad Davis has taught at the College of the Holy Cross, Eastern Connecticut State University, Pomfret School, and The Stony Brook School. Winner of an AWP Intro Journal Award and the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, he has had poems published in Poetry, The Paris Review, Image, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tar River Poetry, Ascent, Chautauqua, and elsewhere. He is the author of four books of poems from Antrim House.