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From the Fire Hills
In From the Fire Hills, poet Chad Davidson shows us an Italy that is far from the romanticized notions of sun-drenched fields and self-discovery. Instead we see a maelstrom of chaos and contradiction, a place where the frenetic pace of modernity is locked in a daily struggle with recalcitrant history.

This autobiographical collection explores the myriad ways in which Italian culture survives its own parodies and evokes a modern ferocity that harkens back to Italy’s barbarian past. As the narrator, rendered vulnerable by language, embarks on his journey, lines of location, time, and perception blur. From the siren song of Dante’s grave to the heights of San Luca, from streets where policemen with Uzis tread a hair’s breadth away from the macabre remains of Capuchin monks, Davidson’s Italy is a study in contrast between the contemporary and the classical, the sacred and the profane. Within these poems sensual and savage revelations unfold, exposing new, uncanny, and often uncomfortable spaces to explore in this well-traveled realm of Western imagination.

Throughout the volume loom “the fire hills”: the scorched mountains of Sicily in summer; the memories of Italians living near the Gothic Line outside Bologna, where the Germans dug in and received heavy bombing at the close of World War II; even the wildfires igniting the San Gabriel foothills in southern California; all the way back to the burning city of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid. As the ash settles and the smoke clears, we realize that what we remember is often just remains, shells, and burned out wreckage, as if there were another type of memory.

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From the Fire Hills
In From the Fire Hills, poet Chad Davidson shows us an Italy that is far from the romanticized notions of sun-drenched fields and self-discovery. Instead we see a maelstrom of chaos and contradiction, a place where the frenetic pace of modernity is locked in a daily struggle with recalcitrant history.

This autobiographical collection explores the myriad ways in which Italian culture survives its own parodies and evokes a modern ferocity that harkens back to Italy’s barbarian past. As the narrator, rendered vulnerable by language, embarks on his journey, lines of location, time, and perception blur. From the siren song of Dante’s grave to the heights of San Luca, from streets where policemen with Uzis tread a hair’s breadth away from the macabre remains of Capuchin monks, Davidson’s Italy is a study in contrast between the contemporary and the classical, the sacred and the profane. Within these poems sensual and savage revelations unfold, exposing new, uncanny, and often uncomfortable spaces to explore in this well-traveled realm of Western imagination.

Throughout the volume loom “the fire hills”: the scorched mountains of Sicily in summer; the memories of Italians living near the Gothic Line outside Bologna, where the Germans dug in and received heavy bombing at the close of World War II; even the wildfires igniting the San Gabriel foothills in southern California; all the way back to the burning city of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid. As the ash settles and the smoke clears, we realize that what we remember is often just remains, shells, and burned out wreckage, as if there were another type of memory.

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From the Fire Hills

From the Fire Hills

by Chad Davidson
From the Fire Hills
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From the Fire Hills

From the Fire Hills

by Chad Davidson

Overview

In From the Fire Hills, poet Chad Davidson shows us an Italy that is far from the romanticized notions of sun-drenched fields and self-discovery. Instead we see a maelstrom of chaos and contradiction, a place where the frenetic pace of modernity is locked in a daily struggle with recalcitrant history.

This autobiographical collection explores the myriad ways in which Italian culture survives its own parodies and evokes a modern ferocity that harkens back to Italy’s barbarian past. As the narrator, rendered vulnerable by language, embarks on his journey, lines of location, time, and perception blur. From the siren song of Dante’s grave to the heights of San Luca, from streets where policemen with Uzis tread a hair’s breadth away from the macabre remains of Capuchin monks, Davidson’s Italy is a study in contrast between the contemporary and the classical, the sacred and the profane. Within these poems sensual and savage revelations unfold, exposing new, uncanny, and often uncomfortable spaces to explore in this well-traveled realm of Western imagination.

Throughout the volume loom “the fire hills”: the scorched mountains of Sicily in summer; the memories of Italians living near the Gothic Line outside Bologna, where the Germans dug in and received heavy bombing at the close of World War II; even the wildfires igniting the San Gabriel foothills in southern California; all the way back to the burning city of Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid. As the ash settles and the smoke clears, we realize that what we remember is often just remains, shells, and burned out wreckage, as if there were another type of memory.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780809333233
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date: 03/06/2014
Series: Crab Orchard Series in Poetry
Edition description: 1st Edition
Pages: 88
Product dimensions: 8.80(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Chad Davidson is an associate professor of English at the University of West Georgia (Carrollton).  He has published two volumes of poetry with SIU Press—Consolation Miracle and The Last Predicta. In addition, he has co-authored two textbooks (with Gregory Fraser) on writing: Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches (Palgrave, 2009) and Analyze Anything: A Guide to Critical Reading and Writing (Continuum, 2012). His poems, reviews, translations, and essays have appeared in a number of journals, including AGNI, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review,and The Writer’s Chronicle.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

In Ravenna 1

I The Gothic Line 5

Vandals 7

San Luca 9

Lovers in the Capuchin Crypt 10

The Subjunctive Mood 12

The Screaming Toddler in Santa Maria Novella 15

Controlled Burn 16

II Aerial 21

From the New Republic 24

The Last Crusade 25

The Grotesque 27

Soft Costs 29

Labor Days 30

III Waterwalkers 35

The Barista of Sant' Eustachio 37

Bellagio 38

Wink 40

Hole in the Heart 41

The Churches of Italy 43

The New World 44

IV Ossi di Morto 49

Limoncello 51

Blood Orange 52

Dispensation 53

Truffle 54

Little Shoe 55

Santa Maria in Trastevere 57

Native 58

V Survival Italian 63

Before the Bombing 65

Pantelleria 67

Elegy 69

The Grief Industry 70

Anthem 73

Exile 74

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