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Club Q
Club Q is a book of mid-American yearning for both exceptionalism and belonging. Beginning as a coming-out narrative, the poems track the story of a gay boy growing up in Colorado Springs, under the spectres of the U.S. military, megachurch Christianity, and chain-restaurant capitalism. As the speaker ages, he examines his complicity in his isolation and struggles to define community on his own terms. Through formal invention, high- and low-culture references, and deep wordplay, Club Q invites the reader to inhabit the precise imprecision of our human situation.
96 pages, Paperback
Published October 15, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 18, 2023
NYTimes Feb 14, 2023: "An L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs where five people were killed in a mass shooting in November announced this week that it will reopen by the fall."
The "Club Q" poem was written a decade ago:
I stand for quest, which is to say mission,
as in "our mission is to provide
a safe space for you to be yourself,"
which is to say "it is not always safe
for you to be yourself."
Prophetic!
This poetry collection came out in 2020. Davis grew up queer in Colorado and his poems reflect his feelings. He did not like the large mega-churches with his family.
From "Shout to the Lord"
I ask my father if I may use the restroom,
where I'll try to spend the next two hours
reading my picture Bible in a stall:
the first day, the second day, the third,
the fourth, the Fall, the Flood
inside the eight-square-cubit stall.
I'm afraid of hell. I count the tiles
A speaker pipes in the choir, a song
I know by heart.
He speaks of being gay in "Personal":
Give me a faggot, fashion mags evenly fanned
across his coffee table, who serves drinks
in snifters, tumblers, flutes, and says behind,
not to euphemize ass, but to signal his nearing,
e.g. on a bike.
I read at the end of the book how James Davis is consistently ranked among the top 100 Scrabble players in North America. The middle of this collection is poems made from short scrabble words.
(I really liked these!)
Aa - "rough, cindery lava"
As opposed to pahoehoe,
which advances in toes,
aa bulldozes the slopes,
leveling forests, swallowing villages
in yards-long balls
of basaltic dough.
Ab - an abdominal muscle
Just one - the upper left, why not,
indented there like the first
coolie cut into the sheet of dough -
to show off in becomingly posed glossies.
Al - an East Indian tree
To the bearer of the vomit fruit
aka the famine fruit the nono the dog dumpling
your each massive offspring a wart with brown eyes.
...
Za - a pizza
Zeugma, that hungry trope: he sliced the pizza
and his heart in perfect twenty-sixths.
The final third of the collection sounds more recent.
"Between Home and Sexual"
Summer, and the gays remember
we hate clothes.
Tan lines disappear. Man-
scaped creatures burn along the river-
banks where lovers make deposits
and bounce.
Davis is obviously in love with language. His vocabulary shines on every poem. Some of these went a little over my head, but I find most good poets do that for me - make me 'reach'.
4.5
The "Club Q" poem was written a decade ago:
I stand for quest, which is to say mission,
as in "our mission is to provide
a safe space for you to be yourself,"
which is to say "it is not always safe
for you to be yourself."
Prophetic!
This poetry collection came out in 2020. Davis grew up queer in Colorado and his poems reflect his feelings. He did not like the large mega-churches with his family.
From "Shout to the Lord"
I ask my father if I may use the restroom,
where I'll try to spend the next two hours
reading my picture Bible in a stall:
the first day, the second day, the third,
the fourth, the Fall, the Flood
inside the eight-square-cubit stall.
I'm afraid of hell. I count the tiles
A speaker pipes in the choir, a song
I know by heart.
He speaks of being gay in "Personal":
Give me a faggot, fashion mags evenly fanned
across his coffee table, who serves drinks
in snifters, tumblers, flutes, and says behind,
not to euphemize ass, but to signal his nearing,
e.g. on a bike.
I read at the end of the book how James Davis is consistently ranked among the top 100 Scrabble players in North America. The middle of this collection is poems made from short scrabble words.
(I really liked these!)
Aa - "rough, cindery lava"
As opposed to pahoehoe,
which advances in toes,
aa bulldozes the slopes,
leveling forests, swallowing villages
in yards-long balls
of basaltic dough.
Ab - an abdominal muscle
Just one - the upper left, why not,
indented there like the first
coolie cut into the sheet of dough -
to show off in becomingly posed glossies.
Al - an East Indian tree
To the bearer of the vomit fruit
aka the famine fruit the nono the dog dumpling
your each massive offspring a wart with brown eyes.
...
Za - a pizza
Zeugma, that hungry trope: he sliced the pizza
and his heart in perfect twenty-sixths.
The final third of the collection sounds more recent.
"Between Home and Sexual"
Summer, and the gays remember
we hate clothes.
Tan lines disappear. Man-
scaped creatures burn along the river-
banks where lovers make deposits
and bounce.
Davis is obviously in love with language. His vocabulary shines on every poem. Some of these went a little over my head, but I find most good poets do that for me - make me 'reach'.
4.5
January 1, 2023
this book is holy.
June 19, 2023
CLUB Q is clever, deliciously flamboyant, often laugh-out-loud funny, and always meticulous: both within the poems formal considerations and the book’s arrangement as a whole. Davis is a master of linguistic foraging, arranging his sonic and syntactical finds for the reader to devour. Within his poems, comedy, intelligence, and despair are often synonymous, and wordplay is the always on the menu. A fantastic debut!
March 5, 2021
A strong collection.
July 1, 2021
Incredible forms, wordplay, sounds, images. Brilliant and grounded. An all-time top five poetry collection for me.
July 3, 2021
The control!
January 9, 2023
Fantastic! Adding James Davis to my lists of poets to follow! Very poignant to read this collection after the massacre at the club the collection is named for.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews