Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature this podcast by Cortney Davis.
Cortney Davis is the author of five poetry collections, including Details of Flesh (Calyx Books) and Leopold’s Maneuvers (Univ. of Nebraska Press) winner of the Prairie Schooner Poetry Prize. Her non-fiction publications include I Knew a Woman: The Experience of the Female Body (Random House), winner of the Center for the Book Non-Fiction Award, and The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing (Kent State Univ. Press), winner of an Independent Publisher’s Silver Medal. Recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship and three Connecticut Commission on the Arts Poetry Grants. Cortney is the poetry editor of the journal Alimentum: the Literature of Food.
You can read along with her poem in Issue 9 of Superstition Review.
To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273
- Tread Lightly On This Storied Pavement: Michael Engelhard’s No Walk in the Park - April 29, 2024
- Dorsía Smith Silva: Contributor Update - April 24, 2024
- Burn: Sara Henning Contributor Update - April 19, 2024
Her poems are refreshingly simple, yet eloquent. Flowery poetry sometimes looses me, since I get so caught up in the language I miss the point. Yet the simplicity and shortness of these don’t loose me. Very beautiful language.
I love the transformation from bird to arrow in these lines: “I fall in love with a flaxen haired boy, feathers sprouting from his elbows. We kiss and become one sleek arrow flying over telephone wires that connect the houses in Pittsburgh.”
“Choosing life over death, I enter a field of sleeping lions”. I am in love with this line! What an interesting way to look at dreams. The imagery is beautiful and really draws you in. Like Bianca said, poetry is often lost on me. But this is really lovely.
A whole new level of depth is added to a poem when you hear it read by the author. Unnecessary breaks are taken out and the flow is as beautiful as the words on the page. Reading Cortney Davis’ poem and listening to it at the same time is a rich experience because you are able to see the words on the page and hear how they are supposed to be read. Superstition Review’s idea for this bringing literature to a new level.
Courtney Davis’ poetry was phenomenal. The way she worded her lines and the details and descriptions she used was just fantastic. Reading the poem and listening to it made a remarkable difference. I would definitely recommend podcast with written work. It creates this whole new atmosphere for reading literature.
This poem defines the term musical. It flows and ebbs. I found myself moving with the rhythm of it. The imagery is lovely. The boy and the eagle becoming as an arrow. The images were like paintings. A true example of poetry that is both beautiful and artistic.
“I am sure they have come to shoot me.” Gorgeous. Her soothing voice matched the tone of this poem perfectly. Listening to poets read their poets definitely add depth to their words. Just lovely.
I love hearing her voice. I also agree with what Mai-Quyen Nguyen about the line “I am sure they have come to shoot me”. I also like the line about “feather’s sprouting from his elbows” which makes the eagle human. The whole poem is quite lovely and I like the epigraph she uses to go with it.
I’ve always been drawn to bird/flight imagery, so all the lines everyone’s mentioned thus far (“feathers sprouting” and “arrow flying”) really spoke to me as well. I love hearing the poet read most of the time because I’m rubbish at reading poetry aloud; however, I enjoy learning about poetry even if a lot of it also flies over my head.
I listened to this podcast last week when it first came out and felt lost in her words. On the page this poem is beautiful, but hearing her read it so delicately made it that much better.