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Left to right: Photos of Arlice W. Davenport; Vernazza in Cinque Terre, Italy, one of the sites in my first book, Setting the Waves on Fire; Grasmere Lake in Cumbria, England, home to William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Dorothy Wordsworth; cover of In Search of the Sublime.
Dive in!
These images are accompanied by excerpts from my poems, reflecting the spirit of each place.
Meet
Your Host
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 literary content. 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. Soon, you'll read of new features coming to Poetsatwork.net.
In addition to building this website, with the help of webador's templates, I am a poet.
Last year, I won gold medals in the 2022 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 see my poems across the coming pages. Take a look, give a close read, then send me your thoughts.
Welcome aboard.
Riomaggiore
Cinque Terre craves attention.
Five Lands of building blocks
And pastel colors.
I stand on the slope
of indecision, stumbling
toward the rocky marketplace.
Can I buy peace there?
Can I make fire on the waves?
Riomaggiore anchors
my fall
onto the watery stones,
black and blind.
Facedown,
I float the Five Beauties of spume.
It is safe among the crevices.
(c) Arlice W. Davenport 2024
Grasmere
Wordsworth tends his daffodils; Coleridge rhymes.
Rydall Water circles, slow in the rain.
The poets compete -- friendly, over time.
Coleridge finds opium eases
the strain.
Each writes beautiful verse.
Wordsworth favors daily speech, spoken plain.
Coleridge bows at imagination’s shrine.
Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy, lives with them, divides the twain.
Her journals paint the joys of simple climbs,
or walks through fields: Dove Cottage awaits,
Awash with white walls; moss-dappled slopes
of the roof.
Inside, Lyrical Ballads proclaims
that the power of art will outlast time:
The Romantics shall never be put to shame.
Dove Cottage, Grasmere, England
(c) Arlice W. Davenport 2024
Song of the Sublime
Cattle saunter the stony slopes
barn doors gape as piles of grain shape ad hoc pyramids no royal jewels can touch
Autumn breezes blow from the chilly north
greens of summer turn orange and red
no one walks these paths without succcumbing to
a riot of hues hammered into
the soil
another step and sacred crimson shines through the woods
another and devil's black swallows the light
I have walked these shortened days into the shadows
of mountains beneath the cover of rocky plateaus
here stone rules as emperor of
the feathered air
flush with possibilities to tear up terrain
I gingerly step into angled hoof prints
slip-sliding on turf picking pebbles from my boots
no signposts point the way no guide at work
now the milk cows have come home
restless and ready to bellow their song of the sublime
(c) Arlice W. Davenport 2024
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The Poet of Lost Causes
I peel back a corner of the sky
galaxies dance or sit out the waltz
every new day glides into the next
novas spark old suns to life
when I composed my first poem
I was subject object creator
only the self mattered caught
in an orbit of ambition and dread
I have graduated to the halls
of Being both here and beyond
ever-present and vanishing into
vacant pages of unmade poems
now I spill gallons of words and signs
the burgeoning poet of lost causes
of growth and depth and decay
stealing stars along the way of the dead
(c) Arlice W. Davenport 2024
"The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" by Francisco Goya, 1797-1799
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POETS, LEFT: Rainer Maria Rilke, 20th-century Czech-German
RIGHT: William Wordsworth, 19th-century English
,
William Wordsworth jettisoned the ornate diction of the Victorian poetry of his day, in favor of clear, plain speech. That change proved to be the beginning of a revolution in English poetry.
Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your
life flows.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
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