Under What Stars
by Ryan J. Davidson
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Ampersand Books
Ryan J. Davidson's first collection of poetry, Under What Stars, starts out ballsy- a Kerouac quote precedes the first poem, acting as a sort of benediction upon the proceedings. "My beloved," Saint Jack says, "who wills not to love me: My Life which cannot love me: I seduce both." Beginning your first collection with a writer whose work has long been part of a sort of standard-issue counter-culture package seemingly provided to freshman high school students (along with the Doors' Greatest Hits and David Lynch's Blue Velvet) runs the risk of pegging you as the sort of Beat-worshipping Johnny-Come-Way-Too-Lately before anyone's cracked into your first stanza.
Davidson (who self-identifies as a Scottish-American) does, however, share with Kerouac wanderlust and lack of a place called home. Living in New York currently, Davidson's travels and therefore, his poems, have him in locations as far-flung as Japan, Austria, Hong Kong and Vermont. That said, Under What Stars is not exactly a collection of misty-eyed, boozy travelogues, but rather Davidson's attempt at weaving together fleeting moments spent across these disparate continents that would be totally inconsequential to the objective eye.
"If I could just show you," Davidson writes in "Leaving Or Something Childish, But Very Natural," "by pointing at the place in my head/...then my fingers wouldn't have to dance this/ keyboard." Here, Davidson underlines his medium's futility in attempting to recreate the lush sensuality or emotion of a given moment, yet it is also his mission statement, of sorts. In "Pearl-Green As a Day," he attempts to describe the peculiar kind of love writers have for their objects of affection, attempting to frame what it would've been about this given girl that Baudelaire or Hemingway would've wrote about. "I know she'll read others," Davidson does admit and it's something he understands perfectly.
In "My Elevator Smells Anonymously Feminine," Davidson weighs the use of writing with the pronouns "you" and "her," emphasizing that, in the end, it's not that important one know whom exactly he's addressing in the work. It could be any girl- any number of "Laura"s, be they his bank teller or a waitress. Davidson is forthright in addressing his own masculine sense of romantic pursuits. While sometimes coming across as mercenary or even, risking insensitivity ("After so many/ "Lauras" you're just/ meant to understand that Laura/ is the perfection of cubic/ zirconium), Davidson's works addressing feminine counterparts throughout his journeys are never insulting, instead filled with a kind of passing regret that a particular life's path had not been taken.
The book's centerpiece, "Missed Connections," is a cycle of 15 poems, each inspired by the memory of someone from Davidson's past. Woven together with each successive poem's opening line the same as the proceeding's closer, Davidson forces us down a road where we read of different females from his past- the one he'd lost his virginity to, the one from NYC, the one with Daddy issues; while each is imbued with his own memories and voice, his descriptions of those girls and his brief times with them invariably remind the reader of situations they themselves had been in. This is Davidson's achievement- in being just vague enough, we're allowed to experience these memories with him; striking a chord based upon something originally felt so intimately is the poet's aim, and Davidson hits a bull's-eye.
by Chris Middleman
