Find Your Place in Poets at Work,
Where poetry comes alive.
Arlice W. Davenport is the author of four full-length books
of poetry and two chapbooks.
All have been published by Meadowlark Press
or Meadowlark Poetry Press in Emporia, Kansas.
His academic background includes degrees in philosophy, literature, French, and religious studies, along with
a concentration of work in art history.
He is also the retired Books Editor and Travel Editor
for the Wichita Eagle newspaper.
He and his wife, Laura, live in Wichita, Kansas.
Meet Your Host
YOU MAKE
THE PATH
There is
no path.
Only walking makes
the path.
One foot in front of the other.
One way forward.
Walk it
like a gangplank.
You no longer swim,
your destination unknown.
There is
no path. Wherever without moving, you consult a map
drawn in invisible ink. One more foot in front,
and you abandon the quest. Turn back
to the beginning. Like a rusted
road sign,
it is battered, riddled
with bullet holes. Its post
has been swept away, crippled
by whirl-pools
in the sand.
There is no path. Nowhere
to go.
You peer past the horizon
for some
sign of life, some color of dusk
that brightens your spirit. You
cannot name it, but you bask
in its beams. It is the color of
belonging, clinging to the rim
of an orange-stained canyon.
Pulling yourself up to begin
again. You make the path, then forget it.
2.
I would walk with you, sharing
the burden of the pathfinder,
the path-builder. But you walk
alone, alienated from the world
that hems you in, that squeezes
the breath out of your aching
lungs. Another gasp
and you
flop like
a fish on land.
Here is your element: nothing
fixed, nothing set, nothing
moving like nothing before.
Do you show me the way?
Does your path entice, incite,
inspire a journey through
the stars? Pin pricks of white,
they cast down codes
of home, deciphered as
an endless odyssey. The path
is but a setting on the helm,
tied in place by ropes
as thick as elephant legs.
I rub up against them,
watch you waver, then wince.
The path forward is no path.
Your pain
of exile is the balm
of walking. These many
years of walking.
(C) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
HELLO. AND
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US
at Poetsatwork.net
This is a new website with some of the world's oldest poetry.
Think of the ancient Greeks and especially the tragedians,
Aeschylus,
Sophocles: and Euripides.
It's hard to imagine that anyone has bettered their poetic dramas or their insights into human nature.
You can take your place beside them with practice and more practice. Let me help you improve.
In addition to building this website, with the aid of Webador, I am a poet. Last year,
I won gold medals in the thematic and narrative categories
of the Kansas Authors Club's annual,
statewide poetry contest.
I also have published
four, full-length volumes of poems, as well as two chapbooks. My fifth and final book is slated for publication in 2025.
You'll find my poems spread across the coming pages. Take a look, give a close read, then send me your thoughts.
Welcome aboard!
ONE MORE STEP AND
I TURN
INTO A TREE
Like a coral reef,
I sprout
irregular rectangles,
stuff them full of dreams.
Muffled screams lull me to sleep,
a voiceless poem
wakes me from
the dead.
I am vegetable,
animal, woman.
Pale, tortuous branches
spring from my head. Daphne
blooms, immortalized. I trap
captors with my wooden net.
(C) 2024 Arlice W.
Davenport
ARLICE W. DAVENPORT
This is that.
Like becomes like.
I have published four, full-length volumes of poems,
as well as two chapbooks.
My fifth and final book, Utter the Holy to the Rising Self, is slated for publication in 2025.
AN OPEN FIELD
Bramble chokes my ankles, boots powerless to clear
the view. I am stuck like a child, tangled in nature's grasp, fighting for entrance
to an open field.
A bobcat prowls the premises,
so relaxed he cannot
track his next meal.
I watch him weave past aging fence posts, sniff the honeysuckle that
masks the void.
I want to walk with him, loosen
my boots, but memories
of a young boy's then still suffocate my now.
(c) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
And Then
the Rains Came
1.
She stands transfixed
before tall corn shocks.
Giant green crowns
rustle in the breeze.
Fat, yellow kernels
glisten with flavors.
The good earth ushers
in new life to nourish
the old. I take steps
toward my ghostly
grandmother, watch
her cotton-print dress
drape my view. I await
nature's success
in the sun. I strip cobs
of excess tassels.
The fragrance
of renewal overwhelms.
2.
Before now, I would hide
among the stalks,
stacking them
into impenetrable
fortresses, my mouth
watering like
an afternoon
shower ready
to burst into
the night's monsoon.
3.
I knew nothing then
about the seasons, sowing
and reaping, the register
of hunger filling
my empty head
with rows of pain.
I imagined invaders,
crashing through
the green, triggering
my adrenaline. O when
will we dine al fresco
from these yellow cobs?
4.
Let us drown our
impatience in the rain-
soaked tides. Let us
paint our faces like
lighthouses of spirit.
Their gleams break
into blossoms,
into colors so rich
the soil turns
green with envy.
5.
Pat down the kernels,
add seasoning, butter,
and the shadow
of earth. Let all
who crave
the sweet sensation
bow their heads to
the sun. It burns only
for a moment, then
fires salvos of flavor,
ghosts of smoke rising
to verdant fields above.
(c) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
I EMPLOY TWO POETIC DEVICES in my most recent book, In Search of the Sublime. To achieve my desired state of illumination in the reader, I focus on metaphor as "this is that," and mysticism as "like becomes like."
Why do this? I think a case can be made that both devices aim at the same goal: unity of identity. Metaphor doesn’t say "this is like that"; there, we are in the territory of simile. Rather, metaphor identifies / unites two disparate objects (of thought or feeling or nature). They are distinct, but each is the same, to allude to Federico Garcia Lorca.
Likewise, the mystic’s "like becomes like" indicates a process of unity, oneness, and intertwining essences. It is the culmination of the human soul's contemplative quest to unite with the Person of the divine. St. John of the Cross was a master of this quest.
The German-Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in “Archaic Torso of Apollo,”
You must change your life. If you are writing poetry, try to creep near
that type of profundity. You will be well satisfied when you do. AWD
(c) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
SUMMER VISION
The blue, blue house craves
to be
the sky.
Its petite windows let in strands
of light
to limn
the dark, reshape all that is hidden.
Azure-on-white clouds muscle their way toward
an unseen sun. It blanches their bulk. The heft
of rain beckons, a promissory note no one dares cash.
They fear a deluge will wash away the color-wheel yellow that drenches Their fields, lawns,
and my rising spirit.
White begets whitecaps,
froth from the sheer delight of movement.
I vow this bright tableau
will never change.
The promise that something must happen
is worth
the drama of violent storms. Fire consumes all things,
blows on its own flames, eyes what does not
deserve
to stand.
Beauty is its target.
I paint over
the bulls-eye on the back of
the house. Nothing
will take aim
at it save my hunger for the perfection
of this summer vision -- a blue, blue paradise
kissed by
the yellow sun.
(c) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
Discover
the World
of Poetry
EXPLORE OUR recommended books, learn about classic poets, and delve into modern poetry.
At right is a detail
of a painting
by Casper David Friedrich. a 19th-century German painter, best known for his Romantic works.
This image is accompanied by three new poems, consisting of six long lines each, with full punctuation
and capitalization
restored. This is
the style I follow now.
Unfortunately, we do not have space
to run the lines full width. Even so,
You can still enjoy!
AFTERLIFE
I waltz through the cement wall,
swirling into
a damp cellar.
Odors of mold and soil assault
my senses -- underground galleries
of endless earthiness and delight.
Beyond
the warp
and woof
of a fertile silence, I hear
the voices of buried dancers
serenade my arrival. They snicker
and snort at my clumsy footwork.
I bear the weight of trespassing
in the dark.
No one tries
to stop me.
No one raises a light to examine
my face. Everyone is welcome here,
legions of martyrs, drained of blood.
I undress and dip into shallow
pools of mountain streams.
Through the earth's crust, the waters
soak the smoldering embers
of brimstone, ever aflame.
Orpheus plucks his lyre and hums
the final movement
of his elegy.
Echoes of Chopin's funeral march
fill the cavernous chamber.
I close
my eyes and envision my coming end.
Is this the ineluctable road to an eternity of nothingness? How can nothing be?
Melodies of
no name permeate the fetid air.
Chants of primal angst bounce off slick stones.
I sense the scratching of my name.
My poems scatter on the wind. They rearrange
as torn pieces, scoop up ashes flickering in halls
of the sun. Here below, heat and warmth dissipate
like fog. A chill tickles the back of my neck. I turn
and spy Eurydice. Startled, we slide back into the abyss.
(c) 2024
Arlice W. Davenport
CONSECRATION
The night I shot the possum in the tree,
my elders cheered.
Blood-lust consecrated me as a man:
this boy who had never made love.
Baying hounds and a carbide lamp
painted the possum in ghostly white.
I took aim, squeezed the trigger
and that holy coat seeped crimson.
For a moment proud of my shot, I quickly emptied the contents of my stomach.
I had violated a dark taboo, taken a life I did not own and had never even loved.
(c) Arlice W. Davenport 2024
A COAT
OF MOLTEN BARK
Between the lines of chicken scratching,
I search for traces of thoughts past.
Who I was when this journal began
I am no longer. A stranger to myself.
Yet something endures, a continuum
of selves, episodic and strong.
Lightning flashes over my home, a frisson
of illumination in the night.
So many trees have died from nature's assassinations, denouements
of tireless smoke.
(c) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
CANYONLANDS
A metropolis of green rivers and sandstone skyscrapers, the canyons loom
above my lookout post. I see the orange shelf where trapped horses starved.
I hear wranglers calling for their lost herd.
I taste the sea on the wind.
The landscape clutches me by the throat.
I want to swallow, cannot breathe.
Immersed in a tableau of blue -- turquoise, water, sky, jays -- I rise.
Wild horses pace below me. They whinny and neigh for a requiem in black.
(c) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
LOVE FOUND
LOVE LOST
LOVE FOUND AGAIN
LOVE LOST AGAIN
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is
a Greek myth about a tragic love.
Orpheus, a gifted musician, marries Eurydice, a beautiful girl, but she dies soon after from
a snake bite.
Orpheus goes to the underworld to beg Hades, the god of the dead, to return her to life. Hades agrees, but on one condition: Orpheus must not look back at Eurydice until they reach the upper world.
Orpheus fails to keep his promise and loses Eurydice forever.
(c) 2024 Arlice W. Davenport
PLANTING
I bury a cache
of darkened seeds
in a corner
of the greening lawn.
They vanish in tunnels
of loam, keen to feed
on the sun's seeping warmth.
My brother digs
for shoots, collects
swaddling clothes
of rain.
A squirrel trails him. Divots of dirt dot their wake. United in want, they sigh.
He is dead now, stuck in a thicket of mortality, mud lining his boyish face.
His headstone is cracked. Jonquils push
to the sky. My poems still taste of life.
(c) 2024
Arlice W. Davenport
Mark Rothko, above, and his paintings.
COLOR FIELDS
1.
The color fields shimmer
in yellows and blues.
Rothko’s ghost lingers nearby, wearing his snappy, green editor’s eye-shades,
studiously red-penciling
each word that a painting
is not worth.
He labors in Limbo
because he took
his own life,
even though he
did not believe
in an afterlife,
or in Limbo, or in
laboring endlessly
for redemption.
2.
Color fields waver
in primary hues.
You can see the suspended
movement in these great
feathered rectangles, electrified by,
shivering with, transcendence.
Van Gogh
believed in it.
As did Chagall: Angels,
on the order of Rilke’s
terrifying beings from
a realm of suffering
higher than our own.
They hear our cries as
shimmering rectangles
of color.
Pick a hue,
any hue. Any hue will do.
(c) 2024
Arlice W. Davenport
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