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Final Inventory
Final Inventory contains the deeply personal poetry by the author, David Anthony Sam, written as his mother was dying and in the years after. Here, Sam celebrates his mother’s life and her impact on him, grapples with her dying and his helplessness to ease her from this life, and mourns her by “mothering himself a new life” absent her powerful presence. Words are a gift his mother gave him, given that she loved to read and was an author herself albeit with few publications. So it is appropriate that Sam use those words to honor her as well as convey the journey that (while individual here to the two of them) is nonetheless a universal one.
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Time after time these varied brilliant caresses of the domestic heart bloom like flowers in the same basket. What a performance!
-Robert P. Arthur, author of Hymn to the Chesapeake and President of the Poetry Society of Virginia.
In Final Inventory, David Sam demonstrates again his profound gift for finding that which is permanent in change, and that which is sacred in loss. Sam’s poetry reminds us that “the deep encumbering earth” of our shared experience is the music we all move to; his poetry reminds us to listen to the forgotten notes of our own anthems.
-Todd Neuman, Professor of English, Pensacola State College, former editor of The Hurricane Review and The Kilgore Review.
Chapbooks in their compactness are a perfect vehicle for condensed attention, as in these touchingly written poems of a mother’s death and a son’s cherished remembrances of her life and their lives together. Metaphors of floral and vegetative growth underwrite loss amid swirling complex emotions that are well expressed in the memorable phrase “the vertigo of mortality.” However, it is the plaintive, breathless urgency of the title poem, Final Inventory, that speaks most powerfully with its repeated “wait,” “wait,” as an revisiting of familiarities and things left unfinished hopes to postpone the end. In its wake, the author resolves, “I must mother myself a new life,” With this book, emotionally and poetically, its happening.
- Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts and Other Than They Seem
Purchase at Prolific Press:
https://prolificpress.com/bookstore/c...
Time after time these varied brilliant caresses of the domestic heart bloom like flowers in the same basket. What a performance!
-Robert P. Arthur, author of Hymn to the Chesapeake and President of the Poetry Society of Virginia.
In Final Inventory, David Sam demonstrates again his profound gift for finding that which is permanent in change, and that which is sacred in loss. Sam’s poetry reminds us that “the deep encumbering earth” of our shared experience is the music we all move to; his poetry reminds us to listen to the forgotten notes of our own anthems.
-Todd Neuman, Professor of English, Pensacola State College, former editor of The Hurricane Review and The Kilgore Review.
Chapbooks in their compactness are a perfect vehicle for condensed attention, as in these touchingly written poems of a mother’s death and a son’s cherished remembrances of her life and their lives together. Metaphors of floral and vegetative growth underwrite loss amid swirling complex emotions that are well expressed in the memorable phrase “the vertigo of mortality.” However, it is the plaintive, breathless urgency of the title poem, Final Inventory, that speaks most powerfully with its repeated “wait,” “wait,” as an revisiting of familiarities and things left unfinished hopes to postpone the end. In its wake, the author resolves, “I must mother myself a new life,” With this book, emotionally and poetically, its happening.
- Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts and Other Than They Seem
21 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2018
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About the author
David Anthony Sam
13 books25 followersBorn in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam is the proud grandson of peasant immigrants from Poland and Syria. For much of his life, he lived and worked in the Detroit area, graduating from Eastern Michigan University (BA, MA) and Michigan State (Ph.D.). Over his career he has been a retail salesman and then partner/manager of a small music and electronics store, a college adult and transfer advisor, a student services administrator, a community college dean, a vice president for academic affairs and workforce development, and then retired after 10 years as Germanna Community College’s fifth president. He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. They have two children and three grandchildren.
Sam has written poetry and other work for over fifty years. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals and publications and his poem, “First and Last,” won the 2018 Rebecca Lard Award. His collection, Writing the Significant Soil won the 2021 Homebound Poetry Prize was published by Wayfarer Books summer 2022. Six other poetry collections are in print including Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018), Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson, the 2016 Grand Prize winner of the GFT Press Chapbook Contest, and Dark Fathers (Kelsay Book: 2019). An eighth collection, Stone Bird was published by San Francisco Bay Press in 2023.
Sam currently teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College and serves as regional Vice President on the Board of the Virginia Poetry Society.
For more: www.davidanthonysam.com
Sam has written poetry and other work for over fifty years. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals and publications and his poem, “First and Last,” won the 2018 Rebecca Lard Award. His collection, Writing the Significant Soil won the 2021 Homebound Poetry Prize was published by Wayfarer Books summer 2022. Six other poetry collections are in print including Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018), Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson, the 2016 Grand Prize winner of the GFT Press Chapbook Contest, and Dark Fathers (Kelsay Book: 2019). An eighth collection, Stone Bird was published by San Francisco Bay Press in 2023.
Sam currently teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College and serves as regional Vice President on the Board of the Virginia Poetry Society.
For more: www.davidanthonysam.com
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 16, 2019
Every time I read a poem by David Anthony Sam, I am filled with his images and strong language, people I can connect to, and a voice that propels me to the end (and often back to the beginning to read the poem again.) His collection Final Inventory is no different, except it is about his dying mother and the years without her.
In “Anticipation,” a young speaker is coming home as his mother watches him. The mother waits as the speaker “…studied the ground for / shallow holes where / rain had gathered sunlight / into clear reflection. // Behind sun-mirrored glass, / she waited her elation, / knowing I must leap / every heaven to splash / any puddle I could find” (3).
The collection’s title comes from the poem “Final Inventory (On Her Dying)” and the repetition of “wait” throughout is a strong pull as it moves the pace forward and slows down. The “wait” changes, from “I think it needs thinning / or it will not bloom / another spring. Wait…” to “Wait…wait. / Open the door to my / dining room…Do I still have that furniture? / Do I still…Wait…” (10-11).
Green beans were part of childhood dinners with pudding for dessert in “The Independence of Green Beans.” Sam explores the experience and memory of picking green beans in the garden and preparing them for supper as a child. As an adult in the second stanza, the speaker makes green beans and pudding for supper, and says, “Here, in this distance from childhood, / I must mother myself a new life” (20).
The collection ends with “Reverberant” where “All this world / depends on echoes: / canyons walking concrete— / waves breaking the ocean…. // While I break my pieces into their fragments, / my ears attune / to that vacant place / where your voice was / when last we spoke” (21).
Death is truly not the end for the ones we love. Sam’s mother may be gone, but the poems here remember her memory. Her presence will pen more words about her life and the love a son has for his mother.
In “Anticipation,” a young speaker is coming home as his mother watches him. The mother waits as the speaker “…studied the ground for / shallow holes where / rain had gathered sunlight / into clear reflection. // Behind sun-mirrored glass, / she waited her elation, / knowing I must leap / every heaven to splash / any puddle I could find” (3).
The collection’s title comes from the poem “Final Inventory (On Her Dying)” and the repetition of “wait” throughout is a strong pull as it moves the pace forward and slows down. The “wait” changes, from “I think it needs thinning / or it will not bloom / another spring. Wait…” to “Wait…wait. / Open the door to my / dining room…Do I still have that furniture? / Do I still…Wait…” (10-11).
Green beans were part of childhood dinners with pudding for dessert in “The Independence of Green Beans.” Sam explores the experience and memory of picking green beans in the garden and preparing them for supper as a child. As an adult in the second stanza, the speaker makes green beans and pudding for supper, and says, “Here, in this distance from childhood, / I must mother myself a new life” (20).
The collection ends with “Reverberant” where “All this world / depends on echoes: / canyons walking concrete— / waves breaking the ocean…. // While I break my pieces into their fragments, / my ears attune / to that vacant place / where your voice was / when last we spoke” (21).
Death is truly not the end for the ones we love. Sam’s mother may be gone, but the poems here remember her memory. Her presence will pen more words about her life and the love a son has for his mother.
November 17, 2019
Here's a case where one can tell a book by its cover, perfect match.
These powerful and beautifully written poems rushed me back to family and childhood. Impossible to get through Final Inventory with comparing and contrasting my own, two of the many missions of poetry and poets I believe.
I'm must add some lines from "A Philology of Resurrection" to demonstrate this fine poet's craft:
"I am not fooled by metaphors
for seasons that break
me into years.
We live in this unknowing cloud
that gathers itself
around the motes of our dying.
We try to screw ourselves
firmly into the soil
but the science of angels
is vacant eyed."
These powerful and beautifully written poems rushed me back to family and childhood. Impossible to get through Final Inventory with comparing and contrasting my own, two of the many missions of poetry and poets I believe.
I'm must add some lines from "A Philology of Resurrection" to demonstrate this fine poet's craft:
"I am not fooled by metaphors
for seasons that break
me into years.
We live in this unknowing cloud
that gathers itself
around the motes of our dying.
We try to screw ourselves
firmly into the soil
but the science of angels
is vacant eyed."
October 7, 2018
Simply put, buy this book. I did. And I found a collection of poems filled with honest, brave, heartfelt emotions that never wavered in exploring the shared human condition of loss, grief and recovery.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews