Scrimmage of Appetite

by Jon Davis

In the midst of danger and disintegration, in poems ambitious and political without being sententious or partisan, Davis turns to the power of words for a way to reconcile the irreconcilable, praising language as a rich, entangled, inexhaustible source of solace and meaning. With Scrimmage of Appetite, Davis has fulfilled Wallace Stevens's image of a poet "merciless / To accomplish the truth in his intelligence."

Genres: Poetry

102 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1995

About the author

Jon Davis is the author of five chapbooks and six books of poetry; he has received numerous awards, including a Lannan Literary Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. He earned his MFA from the University of Montana, and founded and directed the low-residency MFA in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2012, he was selected as Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this on the shelf at a cool spot on Oak Street in NOLA-- shout out to Blue Cypress Books!-- and I only picked it up because of the Delmore Schwartz ref in the title.

It's a superb piece of work. Beautifully informed, formally accessible, theory-literate but plainspoken.

A gem!

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those books where you really, really wish they'd allow you to rate in .5 star increments. The selection here is uneven: some of the poems are pretty ho-hum, some sound insightful for 1995 but have aged poorly, some are so good that I rushed to write them down whole. The moments of brilliance give this a boost to 4 stars.

[Madison R · Rating 5 out of 5]

john donne resurrected amen

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another book that it took me some time to connect with. I tend to prefer simple poems and Jon Davis' poems are not simple. They are long, nested, and complex. His sentences rail against structure. He uses the same words and images over and over--appetite, ochre, birds… But I kept reading because he lives in and writes New Mexico, and somewhere toward the middle of the book, I began to sink into the syncopated rhythm of it. And in the precise middle I found the poem The Wheel of Appetite and was hooked.

This is a book that can be read over and over again. Every poem is a world with many and varied levels that, with each reading, reveals something previously unseen.

[Ray Red · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's so cool about this guy is I got him for an instructor. His poetry is knock-out stuff. If the chance ever comes your way take a class by him. Sometimes he lets his friend Chuck Calabreeze teach a class or two.

[The University of Akron Press]

Scrimmage of Appetite (Akron Series in Poetry) by Jon Davis (1995)

[Patricia Killelea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best poetry collections I've read in a long time. It has me excited about poetry again.