The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems

"There is an eerie precision to her work?like the delicate discernment of a brain surgeon's scalpel?that renders each moment in both its absolute clarity and ultimate transitory fragility."?Rita Dove

"Olena Kalytiak Davis's poems find evidence of the spirit everywhere, in laundromats, in parking lots and frozen landscapes, in the panic of birds."?Dean Young

In her first full collection in a decade, Olena Kalytiak Davis revivifies language and makes love offerings to her beloved reader. With a heightened post-confessional directness, she addresses lost love, sexual violence, and the confrontations of aging. In her characteristic syntactical play, sly slips of meaning, and all-out feminism, Davis hyperconsciously erases the rulebook in this memorable collection.

From "The Poem She Didn't Write":

began
when she stopped

began in winter and, like everything else, at first, just waited for spring
in spring noticed there were lilac branches, but no desire,
no need to talk to any angel, to say: sky, dooryard, _______,
when summer arrived there was more, but not much
nothing really worth noting
and then it was winter again?nothing had changed: sky, dooryard, ________, white,
frozen was the lake and the lagoon, some froze the ocean
(now you erase that) (you cross that out)
and so on and so forth . . .

Olena Kalyiak Davis is a first-generation Ukrainian American who was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Educated at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan Law School, and Vermont College, she is the author of three books of poetry. She currently works as a lawyer in Anchorage, Alaska.