Details
of Flesh
In Details of Flesh, Cortney Davis
conducts a frank exploration of caregiving in its many guises—a
nurse tending her patients, a woman relating to parents, children,
and lovers. Poems in this collection first appeared in journals such
as Hudson Review, Ms., Crazyhorse, Calyx, Yankee, Literature &
Medicine, Poetry East, and Viet Nam Generation.
“Details of Flesh is a book
of uncompromising emotional integrity, imaginative verve, even virtuosity.”
—Thomas Lux
“A practicing nurse, Davis creates
indelibly vivid portraits of patients and healers. Her poetry gleams
with clear-eyed compassion, the unflinching courage to confront the
suffering that few of us are willing to face. This book offers us
a new vocabulary for agony and tenderness, mortality and transcendence
of mortality.” —Martín Espada
Reviewer Doug Marx writes, “For
Davis, there’s no split between what Yeats called the ‘life’
and the ‘work.’ Her profession provides an emotional and
metaphorical framework for her art. There’s a compassionate
matter-of-factness in these frequently graphic poems, and that tone
is, in many ways, the book’s real success. Davis avoids the
dangers inherent in this kind of material: voyeurism, self-martyrdom,
New Age sentiment. Somewhat surprisingly, these poems are fairly free
of black humor, a not uncommon characteristic among those who witness
a lot of suffering. Instead, Davis brings to her experience an awareness
of human sexuality that is almost revelatory in this seemingly asexual
context. A kind of liberation is generated by such honesty, something
a thousand hours of ‘ER’ or “Chicago Hope’
could never induce.”
