Consolation Miracle (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry) - Softcover

Davidson, Chad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809325411 ISBN 13: 9780809325412

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Consolation Miracle is a book of visceral, image-driven poems that search for the miraculous in the seemingly ordinary. This collection fashions art out of artless objects as a consolation, or perhaps compensation, for their smallness. Yawns and pears, cockroaches and crows resonate against historically conflated backdrops, while our own hands seem suddenly strange as they hide themselves in our pockets, balance a burning cigarette between two fingers, or grip the gun that shot Lincoln. Other poems address the destruction of empire, the end of old Hollywood, and the hyperbolic fizzling out of entire centuries. Here, consolation miracles are rarely the ones sought after, yet they radiate in their neglect. Davidson’s poems help us understand the inner life of cows, imagine the plight of a banished Kama Sutra illustrator, speculate about Cleopatra’s lingerie. With a title borrowed from Gabriel García Márquez, Consolation Miracle contains a magical realism for the twenty-first century.

About this title

About the Author

Chad Davidson is an assistant professor of English at the State University of West Georgia. His poems have appeared in Colorado Review,Crab Orchard Review, DoubleTake, Epoch, The Paris Review, Pequod, Poet Lore, and numerous other publications.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Cockroaches: Ars Poetica

They know that death is merely of the body
not the species, know that their putrid chitin
is always memorable. We call them ugly
with their blackened exoskeletons,
their wall-crawlings as we paw at them.
Extreme adaptability, we say.
And where there s one there s probably a million
more who lie and laugh in cracks close by.
At first they seem so pitiful and base
feeding on what we leave behind. Content
to watch us watching them, their hidden grace
is endless procreation: it keeps them constant,
believing they ll live to read our requiem
with the godlike eyes we used to look at them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809325411
• ISBN 13: 9780809325412
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80