Assignment 4: Book Review

The book I chose for this assignment was The Breaking of the Day, by Robert Davidson. Before reading this book, I had never read or heard of Davidson, and actually I only happened to find his book on the shelf by chance. Although I was unfamiliar with him as a poet, I did enjoy reading his work and would thoroughly recommend it to others. The title of his book was taken from the Old Testament story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel "and Jacob was left alone: and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." The poems included within this book, especially the final seven concluding poems in the last section, address the idea of wrestling with concepts within your self. The majority of the poems have as their theme the idea of self introspection and the inner struggle towards identity and self recognition. However, all of the poems contain a moment of encounter, and then opposition a greater struggle with the self, love, emotion, ambition, or even race. These unresolved struggles, and battles with the self leave the reader with many unresolved questions and ambiguous answers. 

Formally, the structures of the poems overall seem to differ slightly from poem to poem. Many are in unrhymed free verse, although some do have simple rhyme schemes. Overall the poems are consistently short, they generally last for no longer than 30 lines with no poems shorter than 10 lines. There is however, a variety of the length and structure of the lines with the piece from poem to poem. Within each poem they remain consistent, but from one poem to the next they can vary from mid-sentence enjambment to completely end-stopped lines. Several of the poems have lengthy and wordy lines, while more commonly others use multiple lines to convey phrases and ideas. The Breaking of the Day was Davidson's first published collection of poems and it received the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The variety of techniques used by Davidson very well could have been a result of  him playing with technique and structure early in his career, before settling into his own typical style of writing. 

Many of the poems within this book are very deep and introspective. They are complex and the ideas behind them are vague and difficult to wholly grasp. Other poems are descriptions and images of nature and emotions and feel very applicable and relatable to any audience. My favorite poem from the collection is Late Summer Love Song, a simple poem describing the feel of summer love. I think its description and tone is very effective at portraying the lightness and freedom of both love and summer. 

Late Summer Love Song 

The evening's first cricket

Shrank from your passage

As your feet whispered

Past where he pastured.

Now the sun steals

A last look through the orchard

Where you lie low, 

Fragrant in meadow.

 

Hear my blood welcome you,

Giddy with gratitude

For what shall pass

In the intricate grass. 

Late Summer Love Song, was very different from the typical struggles portrayed in this collection. In particular the last 7  poems of the book show the conflicted struggle of self that is intended to mirror Jacob's struggles as he wrestles with the angel. The last poems in the collection seem to resolve the book as a whole, and tie the hole collection together. In particular I like that the last line's the audience reads from the whole book, sum up it's greater theme. "I shall never know myself/Enough to know what things I half believe/And, half believing, only half deny." I loved the last lines, and found them to be very impressive and in a sense, they almost tempted me to read the collection all over again just to see what I may have missed. 

I think there are many things a young writer could choose to emulate from Davidson's work. This is his first publication and earliest work and it's nice as a young writer to see his direction and ability to let himself flow freely between structures and subjects for his works. His success at experimentation shows that it isn't truly necessary to pigeon-hole yourself into a genre and style of poetry early in your career to be successful, but rather by moving freely and creatively you can produce better work. So many poets seem to have a brand and style that is particularly and uniquely "theirs" and it seems encouraging to a young writer who is still experimenting and learning that even successful poets continue to change and develop their style and work and they weren't just born with their particular technique just up their sleeve. 

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Davidson's work and I would definitely read other poems by him. I think Breaking of the Day is  a collection of poems many people would like and enjoy. It contains such a variety of depth and intensity within its subjects that I think there is something that every audience could truly relate to, including everything from the abstract and introspective to the more tangible beauty of nature.