Poems by Arlice W.
Davenport
ISBN:
978-1-7342477-7-0
Retail: $15.00
Release Date:
October 14, 2020
Now available to order in the Meadowlark Bookstore.
Praise for Setting the Waves on Fire:
This is poetry of intellectual breadth built on a
foundation of honest emotional depth. I encourage you to take up this book and
read, to follow Davenport’s best advice: “Your heart is bruised, bleeding /
drops of unrequited love. / The viscera of your body / tighten like a noose.
You could slide // your head into it, if you choose, / . . . Love flees / like
a deer bounding in a forest. / You are too broken to give chase . . . /. . .
Let poems be your new heart. // It will not bleed.”
— Roy J. Beckemeyer, Kansas Authors Club Poet of the
Year and author of Mouth Brimming Over, his most recent book of poems.
Like Rilke, whose words open each section of this book
of daily devotions, Davenport, too, is a seeker after awe and wonderment,
something greater than oneself; realizing, like Burke, that the void, darkness,
solitude and silence are necessary terrors along the road. In the end, after “waiting
for Wordsworth’s / daffodils to bloom,” we are left contemplating that same
poet’s lament, “The world is too much with us.” . . . This is a brilliant debut,
fulfilling the promise of its title over and over. For the sake of your soul,
do not miss this one.
— Robert L. Dean, Jr., author of The Aerialist Will
Not Be Performing.
Arlice W. Davenport, world traveler and pilgrim, took
me from New Mexico to New Zealand, Barcelona to Riomaggiore—each poem an homage
to poetry, admonishing me to let the sea be my heartbeat. Setting the
Waves on Fire is both a love letter to Rilke and a manual for the end of all
things. And there’s comfort in these lines, a reassurance that we will all
travel to the other side of dreams, that we can catch a glimpse through the art
and poetry of the masters. Davenport invites readers to journey with him,
to feel the sand between our toes before we launch from the precipice, to
meditate on what it means to live, and what it means to die.
— April Pameticky, author of Waterbound; managing
editor, River City Poetry; facilitator of The Wichita Broadside Project.
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