Forth a Raven
In the Book of Genesis, Noah sends forth a raven and a dove to test the status of the flood. The return of the dove is widely celebrated, but the fate of the raven--the bird who speaks--is left ambiguous. In Christina Davis' luminous first collection of poems, her questions are those raised by the journey of the raven and what he represents: language and communication, risk, exile and mortality.
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Christina Davis holds an MA from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Phil.in Modernist Literature from the University of Oxford. Her poems and reviews have been published widely, and she is the editor of Illuminations: Great Writers on Writing.The recipient of residencies to Yaddo, Bread Loaf, the MacDowell Colony, and the Valparaiso Foundation in Spain. She is associate director of the NYU Creative Writing Program.
"These poems are so bright they hurt: urgent and necessary, they explode and shatter into original wholeness, reclaiming for Soul its own language--fierce, challenging, and spare. This is a book Emily would have kept by her bedside. About it, she might have said, 'Here is a newness in the wind to trouble your attention.'"--Susan Mitchell
"The poems in this first collection from Davis...are taut and spare and show an obvious love of language. A fine, compelling collection."--Library Journal
"Christina Davis sends forth a wild bird in her magical first collection, and it carries messages that are at once oracular, urgent, and utterly authentic. She has inscribed a true book of mysteries."--Edward Hirsch
"In the oddity and rightness of these poems, it's 'As if there were just one/of each word, and the one/who used it, used it up.' Out of this economy, the voice that emerges--rueful like Dickinson, wryly charming like Szymborska--pushes the boundaries of contemporary lyric by being both runic and absolutely clear."--Tom Sleigh
