David Shumate on When Words Become Thunder

“David Shumate’s High Water Mark is absolutely fresh and unpredictable. . . . You will be surprised by your confrontation with the utterly first rate.” — Jim Harrison David Shumate is the author of The Floating Bridge and High Water Mark, winner of the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared widely in literary journals and has been anthologized in Good Poems for Hard Times, The Best American Poetry and The Writer’s Almanac. Shumate is poet-in-residence at Marian University and lives in Zionsville, Indiana. David and I talk about poems that surprise you, the elemental essence that gardening, cooking, contemplation, poetry share, what it means …

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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. …

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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 …

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