Native Species

Davis continues to excite the senses. There’s a bit of all the great nature and rural poets in him—Dickey, Harrison, Hugo—yet the voice is distinctly his own. The lines are dazzling in their immediacy, his eye and ear acutely aware of the natural rhythms of the world. To read them aloud is to hear the music of the woods and rivers, of gardens and graveyards. What grabs you is his heart. It’s so full of sympathy—for the dying, the transgressed, the devoted and selfless. His verse is a reminder that none of us get out of here without scars, be it the deer tangled in the mire of a swamp or the mother incapable of letting the dead go.