New American Poets: Jordan Davis

Introduction to the work of Jordan Davis
Katie Degentesh

I always expect Jordan Davis' poetry to amuse me, slightly confuse me, and deliver a clear, bell-like, emotional resonance with an edge. It never fails:

"Words attack me. They attract me, which is the same thing / If you're a target." [1]

The hallmarks of his attractively conflicted verse are simple: sincere, heartfelt, often self-deprecating emotions delivered via language and scenarios whose meaning is not entirely accessible. His poetry is informal, conversational, at times disjointed in the way that conversations can naturally be. Somehow his lines always add up to a blend of emotional accessibility and situational obscurity that seems both well-constructed and off-the-cuff.

He's the most obvious heir I know to the New York School's lineage, but his verse is slippery enough that the mantle has managed to pass him by and settle in places that, to be honest, feel less worthy to this reader, as no one else nails the clarity/obscurity divide so well.

His first and so far only full-length book, Million Poems Journal (Faux Press, 2003) owes debts to both the New York School and L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E. Where lines from it might read like a subconscious thought:

"yikes I'm white! / Disturbed and amused by gold lipstick on someone" [2];

lines from his more recent work tend to be more of an evolved, conscious version of the same:

"How much worse than being talked about/ is it to be painted?"[3]

Either way, when I read Jordan, I wonder why nobody else writes like this today. His verse is the first thing I think of when I think of what seems to me to be a properly evolved New York School—not the mostly childish, generally stoned or purposely impenetrable work that what we refer to as the second and third waves today. His poems sound like New Yorkers trying to talk to each other, and though New Yorkers' communications may often fail to resonate with each other, his poems never do.


Statement
Jordan Davis

Look at these shiny things! my poems say. Then, listen to them. Smell taste touch. Sometimes the shiny thing is fire.

The work I've loved since I was a baby poet was so brutally good hearted I almost didn't notice how much it talked about pain, loss, confusion, suffering, and death. It can be easy to miss. All of the detractors of that work and most of its fans miss it too.

Words carry feeling. That fact alone makes it astonishing that anyone reads poetry. Music carries feeling too, but it's much easier to pretend to be the person feeling what the melody suggests than it is to accept that what a poet says applies to one's own case. Music stops. Poems keep being there. Landlords, take note.

I pray for the muse every day; she ruined my life.