Improbable Creatures

Jon Davis’ s latest book of poems, Improbable Creatures, is bursting with signature inventiveness and the nimble lyricism that David Foster Wallace once praised as “ off-the-charts terrific.” Like the characters of a new alphabet, Davis’ s creatures form the language of this stunning collection. And from them emerge new meanings for words we only thought we knew— for plumage, for song, for nest. Some of his creatures vault from the page, playful proxies for his surprising insights. Others encrypt the poems with a supernatural intensity, like “ the darkness leaning its black fur against the windows.” Even the ephemeral lives of insects gain sudden, transformative urgency in Davis’ s hands

Jon Davis is the author of five poetry chapbooks and seven full-length collections of poetry, including Above the Bejeweled City (Grid Books, 2021), Amiable Reception for the Acrobat (Grid Books, 2020), and Improbable Creatures winner of the 2017 Off the Grid Poetry Prize. He was co-translator, with the author, of Iraqi poet Naseer Hassan’ s Dayplaces. Davis has received a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry, the Peter I.B. Lavan Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Off the Grid Poetry Prize, and two National Endowment for the Arts’ poetry fellowships. He was the city of Santa Fe’ s fourth Poet Laureate and taught for 23 years at the Institute of American Indian Arts before founding, in 2013, the IAIA low residency MFA in Creative Writing, which he directed until his retirement in 2018.