Belonging

“Reading this book in manuscript, I began by jotting down the titles of the best poems, but gave that up when it seemed I might choose them all.”
“His poems are full of fine emotion, intelligence, wit, and multinational culture. He lithely celebrates the legendary rake Casanova; poignantly conjures “Kipling’s Kim, Thirty Years On”; economically reports a father’s aching futility in comforting his child (“A Bit of Paternity”); deftly valorizes the power of art (“Just So”); and often muses on the shortness of life and the limitations of being human, so cogently that a single quatrain can take one’s breath away.” * The Booklist *
“A British poet married to an Iranian, Dick Davis teaches Persian literature in the United States. The cultural diversity of his life is reflected in the variety of his poems—in their skillfully handled formal range, in the scope of their subject-matter and in their commitment to an ideal of civilized life shared by many cultures. Belonging is a profound and beautiful collection, which stimulates, dazzles, surprises and delights.” * The Economist *
“I want to go through Belonging quoting handfuls, learning poem after poem by heart.…To read Dick Davis is to be reminded of what poetry used to be, and can still become.”
“Davis claims for art the high purpose of returning to us what is most important in life.... Such belonging informs all of the titles in this deeply humane volume of civil and civilizing poems." * Sewanee Review *