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    Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch
    Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch
    Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch
    Ebook79 pages42 minutes

    Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch

    By David Bottoms

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    About this ebook

    “[Bottoms] makes astounding leaps of both faith and doubt, and does so with insight, honesty, and flashes of anger—all characteristic elements of his work.” —The Southern Review

    “One finds here what one expects in a book of good Southern poems: clear narratives . . . evocative images, searching irony, and meditative poise.” —Library Journal

    “Bottoms’ poems do what the best poems have always done: They compel us to reread them. They linger in our minds. They alter our perception of the world.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    David Bottoms explores otherness, the death of parents, and private spirituality. Images of rural Georgia confront the changing landscape of his memories where he searches for refuge in quiet places of prayer. Rooted in nature, Bottoms’ poetry affirms the “tenuous ways tenderness seeps into the world” and the loneliness inherent in memory. Memory is “smoke off a damp fire” as Bottoms explores absence, a contemplative inner life, and changing landscapes.

    From “An Absence”:

    Yes, things happen in the cool white spaces,
    those moments you turn your head –
    the way the trembling branch suggests the owl,
    or the print by the pond suggests the fox.
    Near the end, though, only one thing matters,
    and nothing, not even the fox, moves as quietly.

    David Bottoms is the author of eight books of poetry and has received the Walt Whitman Award, fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, and served as Poet Laureate of Georgia for twelve years. He currently holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English at Georgia State University.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9781619321885
    Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch

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      Book preview

      Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch - David Bottoms

      1

      Why, then, do I kneel still

      striking my prayers on a stone

      heart?

      R.S. THOMAS

      An Absence

      Near the end, only one thing matters.

      Yes, it has something to do with the moon and the way

      the moon balances so nervously

      on the ridge of the barn. This is the landscape of my childhood —

      my grandfather’s country store, his barn, his pasture.

      His chicken houses are already falling, but near the end

      only the one thing matters.

      It has to do with the prudence of his woods,

      the way the trembling needles prove the wind.

      Let’s sit here by the fence

      and watch for the fox that comes each night to the pasture.

      Imagine how the moon cools the water in the cow pond.

      Yes, things happen in the cool white spaces,

      those moments you turn your head —

      the way the trembling branch suggests the owl,

      or the print by the pond suggests the fox.

      Near the end, though, only one thing matters,

      and nothing, not even the fox, moves as quietly.

      Studying the Small Hill

      Sometimes when my wife and daughter are asleep

      I stumble outside

      with our dog at three or four in the morning to piss in the yard.

      In winter the moon scorches the tree branches,

      and in summer it frosts the hillside

      with a shabby glaze.

      Then the bird feeders standing in the smudged shadows

      of the maples

      look like human skulls impaled on poles —

      and sometimes wind and crickets and tree frogs

      make lurid voices in the trees.

      This is when I empty myself of anger and resentment,

      and listen to them puddle

      in the grass at my feet.

      Jack runs the fence line and trots out

      of the shadows, panting, to piss in the grass beside me.

      Often in his eyes there is more to envy

      than anything human,

      and gauging the frantic influence

      of the moon, I study the small hill bleeding shadows.

      It’s easy then to affirm the Christ metaphor

      and all the tenuous ways

      tenderness seeps into the world.

      Slow Nights in the Bass Boat

      Some nights when the fishing slows,

      when the stripers

      and hybrids drift through the cove like elusive thoughts,

      you crank in the jig, prop the rod in the boat.

      Some nights the trees on the bank are black and soundless,

      a fat wall of darkness,

      and the silence on the water feels like the voice

      of a great absence.

      Across the wide cove the lights of the bait shop

      flicker like insects,

      and, finally, a few stars struggle through the shredded clouds.

      Silence, then, exceeds the darkness. Silence.

      You

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