A rare angular music—Review: Night Angler
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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