Hard Inheritance

by John Davis Jr.

A collection of poetry about rural Florida recommended by Andrew Hudgins and Sandra Beasley. Its poems deal with subjects including farming, small town life, and coming of age.

80 pages, Paperback

Published December 5, 2016

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Davis Jr.'s newset book of poetry is a glimpse into the rural Florida of his own boyhood and the ways it still persists through a Hard Inheritance: from days of his youth spent hunting armadillos, felling hay, pattering along thick-rooted paths, even floating down river on a stolen dock, to what this land has become and what it can still provide: a place to teach hard-scrabble boyhood by digging for fishing bait with his son, and place to reminisce on the bygones of a time, like in "Monumental Pastoral:"

Chimneys without houses,
silos without barns
in the country.

Like fingers prodding
upward from graves ...

Davis' poems are rich in image and sound and demonstrate a deep reverence for the natural, the passage of time, and the ways one might start to resemble the place they're from.

[Catherine Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a perfect sequel to Davis’s previous “Mid-American Proverb” collection as both collections grapple with the realities of adulthood. As the title promises, the realities here have a harder edge, where “Today every acre begs you to be somewhere else.” Davis’s style is narrative and his poetry is always steeped in natural settings, so this reader enjoys his imagery even when describing distasteful chores like in “White Frog Winter,” or financial woes in “December Debt,” and the bereft adult petitions in “Skeletal Prayer.”

Despite “Inheriting My Late Father’s Cabin” Davis reminds the reader that we are only “Loaner Living” since “Everything we have is borrowed.” But the collection is not mired in the past, merely reflective of it. Davis has as keen an eye to the future generation as he does the previous. In this collection, the poet’s love for both shines through.