Product Description

And Her Soul Out of Nothing is, quite simply, unlike any other collection I can remember reading in recent literature. There is an eerie precision to her worklike the delicate discernment of a brain surgeons scalpelthat renders each moment in both its absolute clarity and ultimate transitory fragility. Her language is quirky in the very best sense of that word; her use of syntax is brilliant.Rita Dove, Judge, Citation for the 1997 Brittingham Prize in Poetry A treasury of broken meditations and chipped singing, moments of insight and yearning appearing like bits of statuary plowed up in a field, perhaps more beautiful for their sudden unlikely emergence. Olena Kalytiak Daviss poems find evidence of the spirit everywhere, in laundromats, in parking lots and frozen landscapes, in the panic of birds.Dean Young

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273263 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780299157142
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
Against Devotion
All The Natural Movements Of The Soul
Angels And Moths
Another Underwater Conversation
Around The Edges Of A Cold Cold Day
As Empty As A Church, I Believe I Am A Small Testament
Bitterns, Heronries
Buhrstone
But, It's Jazz
The Eccentric Practices Of Certain Medieval Saints
Father's Famous Devastation
A Few Words For The Visitor In The Parlor
The Gauze Of Flowers, A Love Poem
Hey Precious, Listen
I'm Only Now Beginning To Answer Your Letter
I've Always Been One To Delight In The Misfortunes Of Others
An Imaginative Study In Degradation
In Defense Of Marriage
It Was A Coffin That Sang
It's Shaped Like A Fork
Klage
Like Kerosene
Like Working At Wal-mart
Logical Games For The Unbeliever
Moorer Denies Holyfield In Twelve
Mutilated Versions Of My Personality Write Poems,
The Outline I Inhabit: 1. Imagine What Pain Says
The Outline I Inhabit: 2. The Entire Nonexistent Conversation
The Outline I Inhabit: 3. The Entire Nonexistent Conversation
The Outline I Inhabit: 4. A Dull Hum
The Outline I Inhabit: 5. Not Delineating
The Outline I Inhabit: 6. De-composing
Ovarian Tree
Palimpsest
The Panic Of Birds
Postcard
Resolutions In A Parked Car
The River Twists Like Lake Shore Drive
Saxifrage And Cinquefoil
The Scafffolding Inside You
A Seasonal Dwelling
She Was Just A Sketch
Should One Prefer Purity To Intensity Of Soul?
Silkweed
The Silt Of Sleep
Sleep Was An Inlet
Something More Fragile Than This
There May Be More Of This World Than Can Possibly Exist
Thirty Years Rising
This Cold Way Of Life
This Is The Way I Carry Mine
This Specific Tree
To Those Capable Of Deriving The Greatest Benefit
The Unhoused Heart
The Way He Sold It
The Weathered Houses On Ptarmigan Road
Welcome To Lascaux
Who Cares About Aperture
Your Tv Lit You Like A Roman Candle
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author
Olena Kalytiak Davis lives in Juneau, Alaska. A first-generation Ukrainian-American, she grew up in Detroit and has since lived in San Francisco, Prague, Lviv, Paris, Chicago, and the isolated Yup'ik community of Bethel, Alaska. She studied at Wayne State University, University of Michigan Law School, and Vermont College. She was the winner of the 1996 Rona Jaffe Writer's award, and her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 1995, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, Michigan Quarterly Review, Field, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. This is her first book.

Customer Reviews

Stunning and unique
I've never read a poet who writes like Olena Kalytiak Davis. I suppose if some crazy geneticist managed to meld the minds of Poe, Longfellow, Ogden Nash, Dylan Thomas, Gwendolyn Brooks, Stevie Smith, and Sylvia Plath, then a writer similar to Davis might appear, but that's about what it would take.

She uses language unlike anyone else -- as a playground, a laboratory, a room with rubber walls. Her imagery is idiosyncratic, but always powerful, always somehow just right. Her rhythms pull her words to and fro, clattering and clashing together, bouncing off each other, bounding and rebounding across landscapes of dreams and portents. With any other poet, I'd quote some lines, but that wouldn't do Davis justice, for her poems need elbow room and time for their wonders to accumulate. With any other poet, I'd tell you, If you like X, you'll like this one -- but for Davis there is no X. She is her own equation, sui generis.

Few collections of poetry have so much to offer, so much depth and substance, so much sustenance for the reader ready to listen.

among my top 10
I've been reading this book since I got it three years ago. It is always on top of my stack of what I'm currently reading; I never tire of it. Out of all the poetry I've purchased in the last few years, (and, I've spent my money on plenty of it!) this is among the rare books that I won't lend to my friends in fear that it should not return to me. Davis has a way of pinpointing heartache with such precision that I stand in awe. One of my favorite poems, "Should One Prefer Purity To Intensity of the Soul," puts it like this:

While you are gone, I keep the house
quiet. Did I ever tell you,

I once heard a woman speak of her loneliness
as if it were a small bird. Imagine: her sorrow

had a wingspan! . . .

This book is a gift to its reader. Thanks to Davis for writing it.

This is a beautiful book--The first reviewer is an idiot
This is one of the most strikingly, achingly beautiful books I've read in a long time. My credentials as a reviewer consist of nothing more than that I read a lot of poetry and i've since recovered from the narrow visions of grad school, which seem to breed arrogance and a need to attack. I'm not a sentimentalist nor a hack devoted to rhyme or juvenile renditions of emotion masquerading as poetry. But I know enough to know when I read someone GOOD and talented, and this poet earns that distinction. In regard to the first reviewer's cruel, ignorant, and UNSUPPORTED assessment, I would suggest that readers trust Rita Dove over the poor wretch who was likely searching for a place to use "doggerel." Some people love to show off their new vocabulary (esp. would-be poets). BUY IT.