新着

J. R. Cleckler graduated from the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in history/English, with a minor in political science. A planned future in academia was set aside, and many years in retail ensued. The recent events with the pandemic provided the time and opportunity to pursue a dream of writing.

In his seventh poetry collection, Jon Davis exhibits the range and mastery that is the result of fifty years of study, teaching, and practice. Above the Bejeweled City opens and closes with homages to Federico Garcia Lorca’s dream-struck ballad “Romance Sonámbulo.” In between, he inhabits what the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the “inexplicable existence” that marks our passage here on Earth.

My poetry is about catching a glimpse of a doorway to another world, there is a sense of a spiritual yearning to know that place and to connect with it. It lies beneath or throughout our world and pulling it into concrete form is not an easy task but it is a gift to me when it happens. It creates something I love. I touch this world in landscape and in nature and sometimes in a particular place like in the Rock of Dunamase. If you have travelled in Ireland, you will know some of these landscapes and their temperaments well.