The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems
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Honored as one of "Nine Great Poetry Books of 2014"—The New Yorker
“The Poem She Didn’t Write is a breakup book, full of the kinds of invective and taunts honed by a person who has spent, as all of us have now spent, infinite hours online. Its complex tones arise from the poet’s wanting equally to seduce and to repel a lover whose deepening silence only provokes rhetorical escalation. The effect can be like reading e-mails in someone’s drafts folder—but who wouldn’t want to read Davis’s drafts?"—Dan Chaisson, The New Yorker
“Davis’ first full collection in a decade should be stamped with the warning, ‘Buckle up!,’ because entering this writer’s mind is one wild ride of digression, mutation, and syntactical and typographical experimentation… Davis has clearly put the poetic rule book through a shredder, and there’s much to appreciate about that.”—Booklist
"There is an eerie precision to her work—like the delicate discernment of a brain surgeon's scalpel—that renders each moment in both its absolute clarity and ultimate transitory fragility."—Rita Dove
In her first full collection in a decade, Olena Kalytiak Davis revivifies language and makes love offerings to her beloved reader. With a heightened post-confessional directness, she addresses lost love, sexual violence, and the confrontations of aging. In her characteristic syntactical play, sly slips of meaning, and all-out feminism, Davis hyperconsciously erases the rulebook in this memorable collection.
From "The Poem She Didn't Write":
began
when she stopped
began in winter and, like everything else, at first, just waited for spring
in spring noticed there were lilac branches, but no desire,
no need to talk to any angel, to say: sky, dooryard, _______,
when summer arrived there was more, but not much
nothing really worth noting
and then it was winter again—nothing had changed: sky, dooryard, ________, white,
frozen was the lake and the lagoon, some froze the ocean
(now you erase that) (you cross that out)
and so on and so forth . . .
Olena Kalytiak Davis is a first-generation Ukrainian American who was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Educated at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan Law School, and Vermont College, she is the author of three books of poetry. She currently works as a lawyer in Anchorage, Alaska.
Olena Kalytiak Davis
A first-generation Ukrainian American, Olena Kalytiak Davis grew up in Detroit and was educated at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan Law School, and Vermont College. Davis’s poetry collections include And Her Soul Out of Nothing (1997), selected by Rita Dove for the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities (2003), On the Kitchen Table from Which Everything Has Been Hastily Removed (2009), and The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems (2014). Her approach to motherhood, intimacy, and small moments in life through sonnets and free verse captivates audiences and draws emotions with simple yet personal usage of words and language. Critic Dan Chiasson referred to Davis as “the rare poet who has made underproduction an aspect of her glamour.”
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The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems - Olena Kalytiak Davis
1
Summer Fiction
My fancies fluttered round the same images
like martins round a bell tower at dawn.
I checked my e-mails, then, I checked them again:
lariat sweep and stallion glow.
Some one hour’s experience for which we
stubbornly subornatively return:
a dalliance at an execution.
Everything reduced to occasion
but the dailiness of my great Slavic beauty,
unwitnessed, being passed on and through. But
green after green after green!
Summer like summer like summer!
Fat, like Tolstoy’s—
inside the house and out, fat!
Gathering raspberries in a bikini (chto takoe?)
as if the will of everyman were free!
The great Sky over Austerlitz.
The old Oak near Otradnoe.
The Hut at Mytishchi.
The Platform at Astapovo Station.
In the Backyard in a Billabong Bikini.
Each day you did not see me was something
you lost, like, at cards.
After Grass and Long Knives
Suspect enthusiasm—
having eaten pins before—
but that’s what keeps one
quiet, that’s what makes one
stay. Empty is just the first
temporal name
after something smaller sat there is gone.
Then that space
regains its height and wild.
Let let lovers be
light thoughts, just touch
remembered in some not unkind way.
It was all fine.
It was all right.
And now what’s next is
clerestory:
wait become place—and not a cowardly one—
like in some great house made of purest plank,
place to pause, place to be welcomed.
The Lyric I
Drives to Pick Up Her Children from School: A Poem in the Postconfessional Mode
i
has not found, started, finished i’s
morning poem,
the poem i
was writing about i
having sex with the man i
left her husband for
the night before or maybe just this morning.
a sex poem, so to speak, so to say, so as to lay...
a foundation for...
what????????
SEX
i lost my sex/poem!
how did it go?
i know it was called
SEX
something about my bosky acres,
my unshrubb’d down
’bout all being tight and yare
(bring in tiresias?)
did you say soothe?
tiresias, who lies fucking more?
whoops.
who likes fucking more?
("bring in // the old thought // [allen grossman doing yeats]
that life prepares us for // what never happens")
today (the color of) my sex
was lavender then yellow
gold then muted mossy grey and green
i bid my lover
lower
i bid my lover shhhhhhh
i bid my lover
linger
i bid my
lover, go
lover, go!
(see!)
i bid my lover stay
away
i
notices it is almost time to pick up her children from school!
i
realizes she has gotten nowhere, nowhere near it, much less inside it, wasted another morning, can’t fucking write a poem to save i’s
life, oh well,
i
is, at least, working
.
i
pulls on her tight jeans, her big boots, her puffy parka.
i
remote-starts her car.
i’s
car is a 1995 red toyota 4-runner with racing stripe that doesn’t have enough power for i
.
i’s
car stereo also doesn’t have enough power for i
.
i
drives cross town listening to dylan, who has plenty of power for i
.
i
wonders how why dylan isn’t i’s
man.
i
gets some looks from some lesser men, some in better, more powerful trucks, even though i’s
dirty dirty-blonde hair is covered by a woolen cap.
i
feels the power of being a single mom in a red truck.
i
knows it is not enough power.
i
thinks i am the man, i suffered, i was there
.
i
is almost broke, but
i
thinks i live more in a continuous present that i enjoy
.
i
thinks amor fati
.
i
notices the chugach mountains.
i
notices the chugach mountains sometimes look good and sometimes bad.
i
remembers that yesterday the chugach mountains looked desolate and dirty and roadblocky.
i
notices the chugach mountains look particularly beautiful today covered in sun and snow.
i
almost thinks "bathed in