A rare angular music---Review: Night Angler

Night Angler

Night Angler by Geffrey Davis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Night Angler” is a truly fine collection of poems by Geffrey Davis, as he meditates on the meaning of fatherhood. His own father failed that role but finally asks for some forgiveness. The poet himself tries to learn and be truer to the name, Father. The title and title poems suggest a man who fishes the night for meaning and faith and forgiveness and hope.

Dear Boy: In the beginning,

father was a fear I wanted

to call love. For years I waded

heart-deep into that doubt

for version of my name

I could, with some forgiveness,

cast before your image.

Dear Boy: Here’s my hand—

because your arrival has

mended the grave current

of time, in the beginning

I was talking to you.

The language is truly fine. The emotion personal yet universal, poetic yet deep and real.

…light creeps

all across a distinct range of mountain,

stunning plateau of birds into the original

sweetness of song. We want to understand this—

according to our appetite for pulling

a rare, angular music from the body’s

dark cathedral. Or we grow stubborn

for the wild severity of wind

plying trees. We want the vastness of that

motion, the sleep. We desire so much from more.

Davis succeeds in “pulling a rare, angular music” from his desire and body, singing us some of that “vastness of motion” we all want to hear— and to be.

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