Index of Haunted Houses

by Adam O. Davis

Overview

This is a book of ghost stories, and for the most part, ghosts are jealous monsters, intent upon our destruction. They never appear overtly here, yet we gradually become aware of the spirits in haunted houses in the way they tread over creaky floors, slam doors, and issue sudden gusts of wind. These poems are Koan-like—the fewer the words, the more charged they are. The engine driving the sense of haunting and loss is money, which Davis describes as “federal bone” boiling around us. Bison in Nebraska are reduced to bones, “seven/standing men/tall” fodder for the fertilizer used by farmers in the 1800s. There is, too, an equality to the hauntings—every instance has its moment, and persists, despite being in the past, present, or future. Index of Haunted Houses is spooky and sad—a stunning debut, one that will surprise, convince, and most of all, delight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781946448668
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Series:	Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry Series
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Adam O. Davis’ poems have appeared in many journals, including The Believer, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, and ZYZZYVA. The recipient of the 2016 George Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America, he has received grants and fellowships from Columbia University, Western Michigan University, and Vermont Studio Center. A graduate of the University of California, Riverside and Columbia University, he lives in San Diego, California where he teaches English literature at The Bishop’s School. He was also once hit by lightning. It felt, more or less, like you'd expect.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

The Bell System 1

The Body of New Jersey, 1980 5

Manifest Destiny 7

Meteorology Index 9

Nebraskan Bribes 11

Ghost of Macondo 14

Slow City Bones 16

Spirit Arithmetic 17

Haunted House, 1780 18

Ghost of Motel 6 21

Extinction Days, 1873 23

The Mosquito Monocracy 24

Ghost Story, 1971 27

Handshake Weather 28

Roswell, 1947 29

Ghost of General Electric 31

Haunted House, 1978 32

Ghost of Polaroid 33

Stetson in Retrograde 37

Pacific Americana 47

Haunted City, 1967 49

Ghost Union 50

Fever Land, 1499 51

Spirit of Black Tuesday 52

Haunted House, 1980 53

Ghosts of the Bell System 54

Haunted House, 1692 57

Interstate Dusk 58

Ghost Story, 1848 61

Ghost of NASA 62

Border Song 64

Eastern Standard Time, 1890 65

Index of Haunted Houses 67

A House Unfit Even for Ghosts 69

National Anthem 71

Ghost Story, 2020 79

Ghost of a Ghost Story 83

Notes 85

Acknowledgments 89

Editorial Reviews

09/21/2020

The elegiac debut from Davis is interested in haunting in all its forms. Davis wonders “how/ terrible the stars/ are,” or why “We orphan// everything// we touch” in poems that catalogue and consider losses. The world of this collection is one of debt and desire, ghost stories and foreclosures, where “weather is a borrowed room.” Yet these poems still offer delight in their alliteration and repetition. Writing of a “lack// of locks,” or “lye/ and lollipop,” or “lemonade light,” Davis’s work offers a respite of pleasure amid poems that ask what to do after “Wreckage.” Subverting a common trope that associates ruin with nostalgia, Davis refuses to gloss what has been left behind, as he wonders what would have been “If we had been/ better and awake,” and “If we had accounted.” The ghosts of these poems are not just ghosts of blood and bodies, but of money, choices, and myths. This is a collection of stark witness and testimony, with a voice that manages to sing. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Finalist for the Big Other Book Award in Poetry

Finalist for the Big Other Readers’ Choice Award

Publishers Weekly, ”15 New and Forthcoming Indie Press Gems”

Library Journal, "Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry"

Academy of American Poets, “2020 Featured Fall Books”

Neon Pajamas, "Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020"





"This is a collection of stark witness and testimony, with a voice that manages to sing."

—Publishers Weekly, online and print


"A debut collection of prose poetry, Davis tackles themes generally reserved for the annals of genre fiction. Everything from things that go bump in the night to disappearing and destroyed Bison, the pieces actualize how even the worst hauntings, the scariest monsters, carry their own nightmares and doubts."

—"15 New and Forthcoming Indie Press Gems” by Michael Seidlinger, Publishers Weekly


"Davis’s Index of Haunted Houses. . . is part exploration, part exhumation, part exorcism, part easement. Each poem takes on different tones and personalities, revealing new layers with each reading. The book is a ghost readers will carry with them for days, and possibly years, after their first encounter."

—“'This house will outlast.' Paranormal and Verbal Delights in Adam O. Davis’s Index of Haunted Houses," Tupelo Quarterly


"ADAM O. DAVIS’ brilliant debut, Index of Haunted Houses, is an American ghost tour that induces paroxysms of weeping, melancholia, joy, and bewilderment. "

—Poetry International, online


"A travelogue of haunted houses. Ghost prose poems. Foggy, nostalgic fragments that feel like both erasure and haiku. I bought this collection after hearing Davis read and discuss (in particular how he wanted to include a book within a book). This collection is one to read once the sun goes to sleep."

—"Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020," Neon Pajamas



—“'This house will outlast.' Paranormal and Verbal Delights in Adam O. Davis’s Index of Haunted Houses," Tupelo Quarterly


"A haunting is ruptural; an out-of-joint excess that interrupts the cover-up. We ghost a lot & get ghosted, mostly ourselves & history. Leave it to a poet to dive into all this: (the heart, best not look in there), but Davis looks & is appropriately careful; measured: his words tip-toe through their subjects, lifting objects & ideas up [with] the tip of a pencil; shining light into neglected corners, & as a result truly memorable phrases emerge."

—Tourniquet Review, online


"In Davis’ debut poetry collection, Index of Haunted Houses, there is a ghost in every living room and a skeleton in every closet. Ghosts of lost technologies and underwater mortgages. Skeletons of half-built subdivisions, of recliners decomposing in junkyards, of cars abandoned by drivers who can’t remember where in the world they thought they were going. Your ghosts. My skeletons. Our monsters. In Index of Haunted Houses, they are all present and eager to tell their tales of ruin and the occasional redemption, and Davis is just as ready to tell them."

—"Column: San Diego poet Adam O. Davis thinks it’s time to face our ghosts," The San Diego Union Tribune


"Davis' calculated use of language and form means that the varied scenes feel part of each other. We feel the literal word "bones" in one poem echoed by the bones in others. Desert cities, radios, coins used as metaphors, granaries and more come up not enough to be redundant, but often enough to feel like a sort of mantra. The mysteries in Davis' work are tail lights on the sides of highways in Ohio and the oilfields of Los Angeles, they're beasts in Nebraska, granaries in a small town or ghosts in unnamed cities....Like ghosts and summer-sticky road trips alike, Davis' work pairs a timeless and creepy America with hauntings, longing and curiosity."  

—"Adam O. Davis’ ‘Index Of Haunted Houses’ Takes A Roadtrip Through An American Past," KPBS


"I’m fascinated by San Diego, California poet Adam O. Davis’ full-length debut, Index of Haunted Houses. . . . His poems are perfectly dense, lyrically open and wonderfully precise, offering not a single wasted word, space or image."

—Rob McKlennan


“Hypervigilant, fidgety, and frightened as it should be, Index of Haunted Houses nonetheless shows us how to rake through the rubble for what we might still rebuild with, and in its consummate achievement, generates flashes of much heretofore unseen beauty, unleashing phrases that ‘arc like / swans in (the) cochlea’s / cul-de-sac.’”

—Timothy Donnelly


“The reader finds herself in America’s afterlife, with Ma Bell’s pre-automation telephone operators. This is the elegant lyricism of ‘too late,’ calling ‘Ladies please wake up. I want to try again.’”

—Rae Armantrout


“Adam O. Davis has written a brilliant book about our ghosts—personal, political, mythic, lyrical, and yet very real. He documents and chronicles the musics of the unsaid, melodies unheard. There is America in these pages and there is also childhood, parenthood, a rhythm and nuance of being. I love this music.”

—Ilya Kaminsky


“From ‘the body of New Jersey’ to ‘the desert/like a house of belief,’ the poems of Index of Haunted Houses traverse the entirety of time and space that we call American. In this book, Adam O. Davis means for language as precise as ‘ledgers lavish with loss,’ to lead us to the place within us where history meets landscape. This is a brilliant debut.”

—Jericho Brown


“Time and again I was pulled in, kept close to the collisions between the self and the passage of time which populate the poems. The beauty of the language engenders intimacy. The reader easily steps into the text. The wonderful imagination of this poet reminds us the mind—lyric space—is an astonishing nexus.”
—Eduardo C. Corral

From the Publisher