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Still Working It Out
poems
Brad Davis
STILL WORKING IT OUT
Poems
The Poiema Poetry Series 13
Copyright © 2014 Brad Davis. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-813-6
eISBN 13: 978-1-63087-355-4
Cataloging-in-Publication data:
Brad Davis.
Still working it out : poems / Brad Davis.
x + 62 p.; 23 cm
The Poiema Poetry Series 13
ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-813-6
1. American Poetry—21st century. I. Title. II. Series.
ps3562.c8586 2014
Manufactured in the USA.
Cover image: Detail from Birds Descending through Snow, by Jessica Scriver. Acrylic and graphite on panel. Used with permission of the artist.
“This stirring collection moves, as the author puts it in ‘Port au Prince,’ at ‘the sweet, stubborn pace of love and sorrow.’ This would be a less persuasive collection if it failed to confront all its sorrows head-on; and yet, by way of scrupulous and ultimately affectionate attention even, say, to ‘the unhappy widower who lied to you and yelled at your kids,’ it demonstrates that love, divine and human at once, must prevail. One comes away from Davis’s book with an assurance available only by grace.”
—Sydney Lea, Poet Laureate of Vermont
“A lovely collection, filled with calmly spoken words and subtle blessing light.”
—Dick Allen, Poet Laureate of Connecticut
The Poiema Poetry Series
Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . . ,” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.
These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.
—D. S. Martin
Series Editor
collections in this series include:
Six Sundays toward a Seventh by Sydney Lea
Epitaphs for the Journey by Paul Mariani
Within This Tree of Bones by Robert Siegel
Particular Scandals by Julie L. Moore
Gold by Barbara Crooker
A Word In My Mouth by Robert Cording
Say This Prayer into the Past by Paul Willis
Scape by Luci Shaw
Conspiracy of Light by D. S. Martin
Second Sky by Tania Runyan
Remembering Jesus by John Leax
What Cannot Be Fixed by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner
Still Working It Out by Brad Davis
for Deb
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world
—from “Ash Wednesday,” section V, by T. S. Eliot
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following journals in which this book’s poems, sometimes in different form, were first published:
The Adirondack Review: “From the Inside,” “July”
Anglican Theological Review: “What I Answered”
Brilliant Corners: “Cecil McBee’s Right Ear”
The Cafe Review: “The Guineas of Gardiner Creek”
Chautauqua: “Daylight Savings,” “Epithalamion”
The Cresset: “Cosmos,” “Easter Sonnet”
DoubleTake: “The Exhibit”
EcoTheo Review: “Gardiner Creek”
Icarus: “Fr. Nicholas” (sections 2, 5, 6, 8)
Image: “Port-au-Prince,” “Still Working It Out”
LETTERS: “Return to Coronado”
Michigan Quarterly Review: “On Little Boys & their Guns”
The Paris Review: “In Your Absence,” “Simple Enough,” “So It Goes,” “Washing Dishes After the Feast”
Poetry:
