PRAISE...Love, fatherhood, family, loss are all engaged with lyrically and with a deeply engaging and persuasive insight. Davis is a quietly brilliant poet.
―Chris Abani, author of Smoking the Bible ...This is the book I want to give to all the parents in my life so they can see their own struggles and songs and be reminded that the lessons we offer our children are often the ones we need most, that “there are those who touch a body and leave it graceful: be that kind of wonder.”
―Traci Brimhall, author of Love Prodigal The poems in Geffrey Davis’s Night Angler sing in both ecstatic joy and tremendous lament. We partake in the rituals of fatherhood―both coming into and growing out of the spiritual bond. We witness the anguish of loss but also the possibilities of childhood. And in that threshold between life and death where all fathers and sons traverse, the brilliant harmonies of understanding arise in rainbowed arcs like epiphanic trout rising to kiss the sun...
―Oliver de la Paz, author of The Diaspora Sonnets The hooked lines of Night Angler fish in the headwaters of memory and the riverine flow of the present. What we catch are poems about coming to terms with a drug-addicted father, coming of age as a “black boy” in America, and coming through the “wilderness of worry” as a husband and new parent amid racial violence and environmental injustice. Throughout, the poet displays a fidelity to poetic craft and innovative technique that few second books ever achieve...
―Craig Santos Perez, author of Habitat Threshold |
REVIEWS[T]he second collection from Davis (Revising the Storm) is a tender prayer to the everyday anchored in the experience of fatherhood. [...] He addresses his son and, in so doing, addresses us all: “there are those/ who touch a body and leave it/ graceful: be that kind/ of wonder.” Davis has written one of the most moving collections about fatherhood to come along in years.
<<Starred Review, Publishers Weekly>> Bright energy illuminates every page for an emotional odyssey; and sometimes these poems read aloud, because of the right language, become hymns. <<Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent>> As a master of form in its free-verse phase, Davis succeeds in dazzling us with his decisions... <<Ron McFarland, South Carolina Review>> Contemporary poetry has its say about family, often ragingly, sometimes with finicky sentimentality, but this James Laughlin Award winner offers a more nuanced and thus gutsier take. [...] VERDICT A strong second work after Revising the Storm that will resonate with any reader interested in the ties that lovingly bind. <<Barbara Moffert, Library Journal>> Angling is a craft of tenderness and violence, and Davis straddles both in his explorations of fatherhood, son-hood, loss, familial and romantic love, and race. <<Nicholas Molbert, Diagram>> Davis creates a steady heartbeat in his poems, a core allowing the reader to navigate. Davis makes the familiar moments of family into a meditation; once you finish reading, you want to go back and read it over to practice the day-t-day routine family brings. In a sense, these poems make the reader stop to think about how familiar moments are worth holding onto because they create a larger framework for the meaning of life. <<Alison Mejias Santoro, Mid-American Review>> Davis’s latest collection explores the complexities of memory, landscape, and identity. From love letters and prayers surrounding youth, fatherhood, and family—to a river that holds the solace of fishing and life in the South—the book constantly evolves. [...] Night Angler journeys you through childhood to parenthood, through violence to peace, and through the wilderness to home, leaving you disarmed. <<Jenee Skinner, Arkansas International>> [T]his book, in itself, is a master class of how to write about those nearest you, how to risk and earn sentiment without being sentimental. Funny, moving, profound. <<Mark Wagenaar, Valparaiso Poetry Review>> |