Revising the Storm

by Geffrey Davis, Dorianne Laux (Foreword by)

Overview

This debut collection by Cave Canem fellow Geffrey Davis burrows under the surface of gender, addiction, recovery, clumsy love, bitterness, and faith. The tones explored—tender, comic, wry, tragic—interrogate male subjectivity and privilege, as they examine their "embarrassed desires" for familial connection, sexual love, compassion, and repair. Revising the Storm also speaks to the sons and daughters affected by the drug/crack epidemic of the '80s and addresses issues of masculinity and its importance in family.

Some nights I hear my father's long romance with drugs echoed in the skeletal choir
of crickets.

Geffrey Davis holds an MFA and a PhD from Penn State University. A Cave Canem fellow, Davis is the recipient of the 2013 Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry, the 2012 Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and the 2013 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He currently teaches at the Universityof Arkansas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938160288
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Series:	A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America , #36
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	800,395
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Geffrey Davis holds an MFA from Penn State University(2012), where he’s completing a doctoral dissertation on American poetics. A Cave Canem Fellow, he is also the recipient of the 2013 Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry, the 2012 Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and the 2012 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Davis has poems featured or forthcoming in a variety of journals, among them Crazyhorse, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mississippi Review, Nimrod International Journal, and Sycamore Review. He considers the Puget Sound area "home" — though he's been raised by much more of the Pacific Northwest (Tacoma, WA), and now by central Pennsylvania as well.

Dorianne Laux’s most recent collections are The Book of Men and Facts about the Moon, both from W.W. Norton. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Oregon Book Award, and The Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, Laux is also the author of Awake (her first book of poetry), What We Carry, and Smoke from BOA Editions. Laux’s poetry has appeared in numerous American journals and anthologies, and she has received poetry fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at North Carolina State Universityand is founding faculty at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program.

Table of Contents

Foreword 7

I The Book of Father

What I Mean When I Say Farmhouse 17

King County Metro 19

Revising the Storm, 1991 21

Instructions for a Fourth-Grade Report on Texas 23

What I Mean When I Say Chinook Salmon 25

The Epistemology of Birds 26

What I Mean When I Say My Name Is Nobody 28

Call Me Now 29

Unfledged 31

What I Mean When I Say Roller Pigeon 33

What I Mean When I Say Elijah-Man 35

A Poem for God 37

More Than Forgery 39

What I Mean When I Say Truck Driver 41

What My Father Might Say, If I Let Him Speak 42

My Last Love Poem for a Crackhead, #23 43

From the Unsent Letters: To Klamath Falls Correctional Facility 44

II Diaspora

The Newakum River 47

Write the Memory of Throwing the Stone 48

Teaching Twelve-Year-Olds the Trail of Tears 50

Venison 51

How Can I Be 1/32nd Blackfeet? 52

If the Moon Were My Lover 53

What I Mean When I Say Diaspora 54

My Mother's Uncle 56

The Epistemology of Hospitals 57

The Epistemology of Gentleness 58

The Epistemology of Marriage 59

Divorce Means 60

From 35,000 Feet / Praise Aviophobia 61

Meditation at a Pennsylvania Diner: Early Morning 62

Write the Memory of the Girl Dancing in Apple Blossoms 64

6^th Avenue Flora 65

III Here a Coursing Wall, There a Slanted House

I Dream of Meeting Myself, Age Seven, County Fair Field Trip 69

The Epistemology of Rosemary 71

Farmer's Market Sweet Plums: Apology to the Flower Lady 72

Dear Destruction 73

Like This, For a Reason 74

Ode to Trout 76

What I Mean When I Say Forever 77

The Discipline of Waking Love 78

What We Set in Motion 79

The Epistemology of Preposition 82

Upriver, Downstream 83

Notes 85

Acknowledgments 86

About the Author 89

Colophon 92

Editorial Reviews

03/31/2014
“Enter ERROR of desire/ Enter FATHER,” writes Davis in his debut, an account of selfhood, origin, and meaning in the face of an absent father and broken relationships. Rendering reality here means that “all your effort looks like the wrong/ and right thing,” and that “ach shift in the winds of remembering renders me// immediate again.” Throughout its three sections, the engine powering the collection runs on retrospection and introspection, and a fierce questioner, challenging the accuracy of the observations, is always at the wheel. “What would it mean to revise this memory? Perhaps we could return to some/ first faith, some uninterrupted union.” Acutely aware of myriad meanings to each assertion and of the many versions of each story, these poems are strongest where they push through poetic narrative about personal experience to create poetry where storytelling itself is subverted. In one poem, for example, Davis speaks to a child version of himself: “How dearly I want to give you/ the gentlest version of my voice, say something// to suspend your belief in disasters.” Continuously challenging himself to “ell it right this time,” Davis displays an elegant tenacity that begs to be unleashed on subjects beyond personal history. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Finalist for the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry

Winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize

One of Library Journal's "Thirty Amazing Poetry Titles for Spring 2014"

Winner of the 2013 Anne Halley Poetry Prize

“Revising the Storm is one of the best first books I’ve read in a good while. Its subjects—childhood, an absentee father, marriage, divorce, re-marriage, birth—are not new, but the approach is fresh, the language lyrical, and the poems well-tuned and masterfully wrought. Geffrey Davis is spellbinding. Like a fine artist, he knows how to bring even the smallest heartbreaking detail to light.” —Dorianne Laux

“Thematically, Davis hits some strong subjects: missing fathers, marriage and divorce, early years and rebirth, all painful twists of reality and even sentimentality that make families too close for comfort yet often beyond reach … Davis’ poems are sweeping, lyrical glimpses into masculinity, violence, drug use, and history.” —Booklist

“Acutely aware of myriad meanings to each assertion and of the many versions of each story, these poems are strongest where they push through poetic narrative about personal experience to create poetry where storytelling itself is subverted … Continuously challenging himself to ‘[t]ell it right this time,’ Davis displays an elegant tenacity that begs to be unleashed on subjects beyond personal history.” —Publishers Weekly

“Never prosaic but always knowable, the collection is in itself a storm that passes slowly but never disappears entirely … It is a feat for Davis to create so much tenderness here without being precious. All his subjects, even the loathsome ones, are beloved. All his speakers are filled with hope, always seeking a new definition for humane, constantly revising the storms inside themselves.” —The Rumpus

One of five “sizzling books you must slip into your travel bag this summer.” —AMTRAK, National Railroad Passenger Corporation

"A mother crying alone in her kitchen, a hungry boy unable to sleep in his bed, the unbearable weight cast by an absent father—these quotidian and universal miseries are by no means exclusive to the world of poetry, but when rendered in verse by a talented poet such as Davis, readers bare witness with new eyes. Revising the Storm is a considerable collection replete with the dark troubles and misfortunes of life that only serve to make its moments of beauty that much brighter." —LA Review

“This is a book of poems for those who believe in the cathartic power of poetry and its ability to render meaning from pain. Despite its lagging moments, Revising the Storm succeeds at transforming loss and grief into something worth sharing, and beyond any discussion of Davis’s romantic conceits or clever self-reflexivity, doesn’t that matter more? After all, if poetry can’t save us from our suffering, what can?” —Zone 3


"What is most striking about the poems, individually and as a group, is their ability to maintain calm in the constant flux of the stormy weather they and their narrators inhabit. Davis takes us through the liminal spaces between experience and memory, compels us to listen as stories unfold, and reminds us to be mindful of silence and breath as landscapes spin out of control." —Fjords Review

From the Publisher