Grounded in wonder and fueled by an impulse to praise, the poems in James Davis May's debut collection, Unquiet Things, grapple with skepticism, violence, and death to generate lasting insights into the human experience. With compassion and humor, this second and final volume in Claudia Emerson’s Goat Island Poets series exposes the unseen tragedies and rejoices in the small, surprising moments of grace in everyday life.
May’s poems impart sincere astonishment at the natural world, where experiences of nature serve as "stand-ins, almost, / for grace." His poems seek to transcend cynicism, turning often to the landscapes of North Georgia, his native Pittsburgh, and eastern Europe, as well as to his literary forebears, for guidance. For the poet, no force propels that transcendence more powerfully than love: love for his wife and daughter, love for language, and love for the incomprehensible world that he inhabits. These stylistically varied poems are by turns conversational, earnest, self-deprecating, meditative, and often funny, whether they're discussing grand themes such as love and beauty, or more corporeal subjects like fever and food poisoning.
Lyrical and strange, tragic and amusing, Unquiet Things traces an experiential journey in the ordinary world, uncovering joys that span from the lingering memories of childhood to the losses and triumphs of adulthood.
The Reddened Flower, the Erotic Bird
I
Fringe Tree
Portrait of the Self as Skunk Cabbage
Dispute
Lessons
Time for Such a Word
The Reality Auction
Displacement
Protestant Elegy
If You Want the Truth
Sharpened Skates
The Problem with Poems That Describe Love
II
It Only Brings Me Sorrow
To My Lover’s Ex-Husband
Fields and Ledges
Basil
Nostos
Reciprocal
It Must Have Been the Mussels
An Explanation of Romanticism
My Keats Year
Late Coleridge
Unquiet Things
One Pearl
Esteesee
Reflections on Having Left a Place of Employment
III
Two Angels
The Crypt on the Rock
Birkenau
Gratis
American Irony
Saint Lucia
Domesticity
Oysters
“A Culture”
L’Origine du Monde
At the Artists’ Colony
Natural Grief
The Sap Gone Out
Butterfly Soup
IV
After BashÅ
The Causes of Saints
An Existential Bear
Smerdyakov with a Guitar
Duel
A Variation on the Same
Reverberations
Someone Takes a Pine Tree Apart
Critique and Rebuttal
Coda
A Lasting Sickness
James Davis May is the author of the poetry collection Unquiet Things and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in creative writing. He lives in Macon, Georgia, where he directs the creative writing program at Mercer University.
Praise for Unquiet Things
“Unquiet Things is the debut collection by James Davis May, a poet with prodigious powers of observation and description. . . . The clarity of May’s writing and his self-deprecating honesty create an intriguing intimacy of the ordinary.”—Green Mountain Review
