Search Results for: todd davis advent

Backporch Advent Outpost with Todd Davis (#1)

by Swanson

“Reading Todd Davis’s gorgeous poems, you can’t help but feel that the capacities of human vision, and also our appetite for exactly this way of seeing and naming, have been mysteriously, precisely increased.” —Jane Hirshfield, author of Come, Thief and The Beauty Backporch Advent Outpost with Todd Davis (#1) Blessed Darkness and Blessed Light, this Advent season. Here, In the midst of Season Two of Contemplify, I am sliding in a bonus episode. This is the 2nd annual Backporch Advent Outpost on Contemplify. For those who recall, last year poets and teachers offered poems, prayers and practices. This year, it will …

A Revelatory Elegy of Unknowing with Todd Davis (author of Coffin Honey)

by Swanson

Reading Todd Davis’s gorgeous poems, you can’t help but feel that the capacities of human vision, and also our appetite for exactly this way of seeing and naming have been mysteriously, precisely increased. – Jane Hirshfield The poems of Todd Davis sharpen a reader’s spirit and focus, on the bloodstained teeth breaking apart the day-to-day doldrums and on the mythic imagination necessary to bear witness to this daunting moment in our species, on our planet.  Todd Davis and I spoke back in 2019 about his book Native Species and he has read his poems in the last two years on …

Advent Outpost from the Backporch (#3)

by Swanson

“Wherever humility goes, all inner disquiet ceases and outward adversities do not produce alarming impressions.” – St. Theopan the Recluse Advent Outpost from the Backporch (#3) This is the last round, my friends, as we tip toe towards the solstice before falling on top of Christmas. This is the last Advent outpost in the series. See, last year my wife and I started an Advent neighborhood get together last year; soup, wine, bread, cheese, poetry, stories, hymns, and children bellowing. A eucharist of sorts, but more with an ancient turn to honoring both the light in the darkness, and the …