Todd Davis

Todd Davis has won the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. He teaches creative writing, American literature, and environmental studies at Penn State University’s Altoona College. He has authored and edit...

Some Heaven

Todd Davis

"...a fine, rare poet." - Jim Harrison

Listen to a podcast of GARRISON KEILLER reading a few Todd Davis poems on WRITER'S ALMANAC

Illusion
We've been burning prairie
grasses along the highway
today, offering the illusion
of control, as if the moving
arms of fire could be
choreographed.

This Morning
the rains start to clear
in the west, and as the sun
begins to rise, it is in the west
that the light first appears.
Back to the east, the sky
remains dark while the rain
continues to fall, as if the earth
had changed its mind, turned
and walked the other way.

First Snow, after September 11th
Last night the wind came strong
from the north, brought black
walnut and maple limbs back
to earth—fence row cluttered
in despair. Across the field
a crow beats his wings
against heavy clouds.


Todd Davis writes poems that are spare yet eloquent, poems with an appealing simplicity that belies their insight and consequence. They are rooted in the firmament of nature's frequently bruised bounty, yet grounded by our all-too-human experiences on this planet, living on a land that we so often treat with contempt or blunder through blindly. With the eye of a naturalist and the heart- wisdom of a sage, Davis reveals scenes of our lives that we might have otherwise missed. His poems are like the best kind of snapshot; they show us the details that deserve more attention, from a five- year-old's joy in sitting on Dad’s lap and "driving" the family car or standing on a chair to help Mom make Jell-O, to the devastation of drought on farmland or the extraordinary lushness of an ordinary backyard. Because Davis holds up these prose-photos and urges us to take another look, we suddenly experience their profundity and comprehend their meaning. With disarming directness, he connects nature to family, landscape to community, and earth to faith.


Some Heaven brings together more than 100 Davis poems. Most are concise; all are approachable. In fact, they pull readers in, stirring our senses, tickling our memories. Here are poems about Amish gardens, changing seasons, friends at school, tractors, and deer. Davis urges us to see—not to take a quick look, but to really see—frost on goldenrods, the qualities of dirt, the color of air. Underneath, of course, these are poems about universal themes: love, loss, life, death; but in Davis's skilled hands, they appear to us to be more akin to wild strawberries growing on a rock wall or apples discovered in an abandoned orchard: something fresh, unexpected, and thankfully welcomed.

Reviews

"Some Heaven is a considerable book of poems. Many poets feel that they know the natural world, but Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind. He is a fine, rare poet." —Jim Harrison, author of The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems and The Woman Lit by Fireflies

"Some Heaven is a book rich in compassion and tenderness. The poems, through which Todd Davis limns the life and growth of his family, have a quietly penetrating power that can take the reader by surprise and delight and make him, or her, all the better for the experience. They open clear windows into the natural world and irresistibly draw us through them." - Dan Gerber, author of Trying to Catch the Horses

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