DAUGHTER

poems by Cortney Davis

These poems are the work of a master, with Davis contrasting the monthly statistical fate of millions of people with COVID-19 with the specifics of her daughter’s unfolding struggle with breast cancer, “the tragedy within the tragedy.” The poet’s gaze is direct, attuned to the details of suffering, and at the same time, generous, vulnerable, beautiful, and compassionate. At one point she asks, “Who might be my guides and mentors? / Where are my helpers, now that I need them?” In this stunning collection of poems, Cortney Davis becomes our guide, our mentor, holding the reader in her arms the way she held her daughter on both her first and final journeys, “all the way home.”

―Richard M. Berlin, author of Freud on My Couch