Good poetry is inherently spiritual. It is a clown car of interpretation. Once a door of perception is opened, endless and surprising “Ahas” tumble out. When you have a spiritual teacher who embodies a poem, their words become thunder and contemplation soaks you. The teacher who is having the greatest impact on me right now does this. And this teacher is uneducated and illiterate. This teacher is my 4-years old son. Two days ago my wife Laura had a meeting with his teacher. Laura learned that that morning our son had been spouting mildly inappropriate song lyrics to his classmates, …
Tag: poetry
Nine Poems from Coffin Honey by Todd Davis
A fine, rare poet. – Jim Harrison I asked Todd Davis if he could read some of his poems from his latest collection called Coffin Honey. And he generously said yes. Take a beath, find a comfortable seat, preferably out of doors and let the poetry of Todd Davis seep in through your pores and raise forth the best of you. Before we get started, I want to note that in this episode of poems from Todd Davis include content about sexual assault and self mutilation. If that sounds like poetry you are not comfortable listening to, we sure understand. …
A Revelatory Elegy of Unknowing with Todd Davis (author of Coffin Honey)
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 …