Todd Davis (webpage) teaches creative writing, environmental studies, and American literature at Penn State University’s Altoona College. He is the author of three books of poetry - The Least of These (Michigan State University Press, 2010), Some Heaven (Michigan State University Press, 2007) and Ripe (Bottom Dog Press, 2002) - one chapbook, Household of Water, Moon, and Snow: The Thoreau Poems (Seven Kitchens Press, 2010), and co-editor of the anthology, Making Poems: 40 Poems with Commentary by the Poets (State University of New York Press, 2010). His poems have been featured on the radio by Garrison Keillor on "The Writer’s Almanac" and by Marion Roach on "The Naturalist’s Datebook," as well as by Ted Kooser in his syndicated newspaper column "American Life in Poetry." In addition to his creative work, Davis is the author or editor of six scholarly books, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Crusade, or How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a New Kind of Humanism (State University of New York Press, 2006) and Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory (University Press of Virginia, 2001). His latest book is an edited collection of creative nonfiction by poets writing about basketball.
Thanks for the positive comments. This was a tough poem to work on. Lamar was a very good man whose life came quietly to a close because of the disease–from vibrancy to a shell that locked all his thoughts behind his eyes.
The Manual series, when complete, will tell you everything you need to know that you didn't learn in kindergarten. Belgian video-artist and soundcreator Swoon is making videos for some of its sections. Guest-author Luisa A. Igloria has been writing a poem a day since November 2010 in response to Dave's posts at The Morning Porch. Yet another on-going collaboration is the dialogue in poems and photos prompted by late-night conversations between Dave and British blogger Rachel Rawlins, a project we call Conversari. Finally, the Words on the Street cartoon, featuring Dave's urban doppelganger Diogenes, returned at the beginning of 2012 as a weekly feature after a several-year hiatus.
Gorgeous.
Oh! Thoughts of my father, who had Parkinson’s… a good man.
(o)
This is lovely.
The image of the “bad baby” is a great one.
Great photo.
Powerful.
Great line: Lamar’s labored breathing lingers, rests
like a shawl on the shoulders
Thanks for the positive comments. This was a tough poem to work on. Lamar was a very good man whose life came quietly to a close because of the disease–from vibrancy to a shell that locked all his thoughts behind his eyes.