Read more
The poems in Jon Davis's latest collection, Fearless Now & Nameless, direct his keen eye toward the ironies on which this life so often depends-- the failures of language, the violence of nature, the indifference of death. " Is that what spirit is?" the poet wonders, considering the nature of birds, the thrasher, the finch " humping in the eaves. Gathering straw and string. / Laying the griefstuck delicate eggs." As we read, we find our own eyes grow sharper, better able to take it all in.
About the author
Jon Davis is the author of six chapbooks and seven previous full-length poetry collections, including, most recently, Above the Bejeweled City (Grid Books, 2021) and Choose Your Own America (Finishing Line, 2022). Davis also co-translated Iraqi poet Naseer Hassan's Dayplaces (Tebot Bach, 2017). He has received a Lannan Literary Award, the Lavan Prize from the Academy of American Poets, a Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including A House Called Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Poetry; Four Quartets: Poetry in the Pandemic; Poetry is Bread; Photographers, Writers, and the American Scene; Poet's Choice; Sixty Years of American Poetry; The Best of the Prose Poem; No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets; and Telling Stories: A Writer's Anthology and have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, and Vietnamese. He performs in the poetry + rock band Clap the Houses Dark. He taught creative writing and literature for thirty years, two at Salisbury University and twenty-eight at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2013, he founded the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing at IAIA, which he directed until his retirement in 2018. From 2012- 2014, he served as the City of Santa Fe's fourth poet laureate. He maintains a website at jondavispoet.com.
