ODES & fragments by Alan Davies
ISBN 978-0-9637536-8-7 | Poetry | 236 pages
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ODES & fragments by Alan Davies presents a substantial collection of recent poetry, including odes and fragments as well as modes above and beyond. Ranging in length from a few words to twenty-plus pages, these poems vary widely, exploring love and fellowship, war and adversity, beginnings and endings (and the ongoing), instances of thought, feelings that flutter then fail, moments of apprehension (both senses), and our confrontation with the irretrievable.
Praise for Alan Davies
The kind of skill with handling language that can’t be rushed or faked, and that I only hear in the work of writers who have really practiced for a long time.
—Craig Dworkin
Alan Davies’s poems have such great sound and are open and situated and fearless in their response to what happens internally and in the big often ugly outside. A startling writer and very precise on whatever path he sets for himself.
—Carla Harryman
Davies hasn’t been publishing a lot in recent years & to see this much work at once, this much first-rate work, is completely bracing. He hasn’t lost a step & is every bit as uncompromising as ever. This actually can make Davies a difficult read at times, but it never is complexity just for the sake of showing off. He continues to be the Diogenes of the New York langpo scene.
—Ron Silliman
Davies’s belief in radical self-reflexivity has led him, in the course of his writing career, from a virtually opaque formalism to a continuity of text and life-world that is anything but aesthetic construction.
—Barrett Watten
[Davies] has suggested to me ways of thinking about connective possibility, ways through which ‘no one is absent anymore’…. how writing and reading matters, not just for its comforts or its eloquent aesthetics, but for the way it can take us through comfort and aesthetics into relations with others, for the way it can model thinking.
— Juliana Spahr
ALAN DAVIES IS THE ONLY LANGUAGE POET WHO HAS EVER HAD SEX. The rest of them are virgins, which, I know, is weird — I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just a historical fact. But because of this, Davies’s work stands out as addressing an aspect of life, of reality, and of vitality that other writers might not have had the experience to write about.
—Steve Zultanski
About Alan Davies
Alan Davies was spawned on the Canadian prairies / and lived in various spots across that country through high school. Then / college in Massachusetts / a year in Boulder / and final removal to New York City. He is the author of a bunch of books / including Active 24 Hours / Name / Signage / Candor / Rave / Raw War. He writes essays and book reviews as well as philosophy and critical theory and the like. canadianluddite@yahoo.com
Audio of interviews and readings with Alan Davies at Pennsound (University of Pennsylvania) are available here.
