Podcast appearances and mentions of Adam O Davis

Adam O. Davis selects and shares poems that engage with journeys—across time, through mystery, into the past, or to shape a future. He introduces Nathaniel Mackey meditating on eternal questions (“Glenn on Monk's Mountain”), Maurya Simon reminding us that the dead surround and sustain us (“El Día de los Muertos”), and Robert Creeley poignantly speaking across time (“I Know a Man”). Davis closes by reading his poem “Interstate Highway System,” his own plea for living sparked by a 2015 road trip across America.You can find the full recordings of Nathaniel Mackey, Maurya Simon, and Robert Creeley reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:Nathaniel Mackey with jazz pianist Marilyn Crispell (2013)Maurya Simon (2019)Robert Creeley (1963)Check out Davis's Index of Haunted Houses Hotline by calling 619-329-5757.

Index of Haunted Houses, the debut collection by Adam O. Davis, uses ghosts and hauntings to talk about the perilous economic and social moment the United States finds itself in currently. During this podcast, released in time for Halloween, Davis discusses how we've come to use the language of the uncanny to describe the world we live in today, why hauntings are, counter-intuitively, a great metaphors for the nature of life, and what capitalism has in common with Bruce Willis' character in The Sixth Sense. Adam O. Davis is a poet, teacher and photographer, and his haunting photos appear throughout Index of Haunted Houses. He was in born in Tucson, Arizona and raised in various places including Utah, France, New Jersey, California, and Scotland. His work has appeared in many journals, including The believer, the Paris review, and the Poetry Review.

This is a book of ghost stories, and for the most part, ghosts are jealous monsters, intent upon our destruction. They never appear overtly here, yet we gradually become aware of the spirits in haunted houses in the way they tread over creaky floors, slam doors, and issue sudden gusts of wind. These poems are Koan-like—the fewer the words, the more charged they are. The engine driving the sense of haunting and loss is money, which Adam O. Davis describes as “federal bone” boiling around us. Bison in Nebraska are reduced to bones, “seven/standing men/tall” fodder for the fertilizer used by farmers in the 1800s. There is, too, an equality to the hauntings—every instance has its moment, and persists, despite being in the past, present, or future. Index of Haunted Houses is spooky and sad—a stunning debut, one that will surprise, convince, and most of all, delight.  _______________________________________________ Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.