“Italics is a collection of meditations uttered softly, delivered by force. Alison Davis is a poet of the lyrical observation (a bud, a blossom, a bush, a bouquet) and wild leaps (‘None of us is walking a dog’). We are lulled and shocked awake by the work in this collection.”
— Laura Kasischke, author of Space, in Chains and more
italics
WILDHOUSE PUBLISHING, 2026
“Where most poets want our attention, Alison Davis wants our participation. italics is a map to wonder—motherhood, grief, desire, wilderness, and the daily work of staying human—drawn by a mind that’s mastered curiosity and a heart that refuses to quit as we ponder together the biggest of questions: ‘what to do with all this beholding?’ The book left me feeling more grateful and slightly askew.”
— Timothy Green, editor of Rattle
“I love these poems. I love Alison Davis’s compassionate embrace of life in all its mystery and messiness. In ‘A More Generous Grammar,’ Davis tells us to identify her not with her pronouns but her adjectives — deep / radical / wild — and her verbs — unbind / bridge / heal. If these words describe the poet, they also describe the poems, rich with insights and imaginings that never shy from the harder truths of being alive. ‘How do you encourage someone to fall / in love with the world?’ Davis asks in ‘Future Epigraphs.’ One surefire way: Read this book.”
— Lynne Knight, author of The Language of Forgetting
A Rare But Possible Condition
SADDLEROAD PRESS, 2025
“In A Rare But Possible Condition, Alison Davis braids capacious curiosity with raw vulnerability. Intimate with Elizabeth Bishop’s art of losing and Adrienne Rich’s wrecks, Davis writes from the aftermath of disasters of a ‘love, which has so many strange / hands and absolutely no sense of decorum whatsoever.’ This moving debut is driven by a hungry spirit of inquiry and a reverence that stands ready to kneel before each ordinary river’s miracle. Reaching across unknowable distances to a stranger, a brother, a daughter, a friend, a lover, Davis writes with bone-deep knowledge of the flawed and fleeting nature of all our bonds yet still dares to plead ‘mispronounce me but say me.’”
—Bronwen Tate, author of The Silk the Moths Ignore
Wild Canvas
FINISHING LINE PRESS, 2024
“One of [Alison’s] most apt tools in these poems is the question mark – her mastery of it makes it as though you can actually feel one in your palm. She helps you behold the question mark’s smooth edge, its fine point, its lone period, both isolated and in community. And then, she holds it to your eye, and uses it as a lens through which to see our world.”
–Phil Kaye, author of Space and Time
“Alison Davis’ poems in Wild Canvas take us on a trip back to childhood memories, inner conflicts in facing family traumas, struggles as a teacher, and being a woman today. Behind these curtained in the subtle darkness is her deep understanding as a writer with her metaphor of the map: “that’s the kind of paths we chart with words, all unfolding and changing colors and rearranging what is face to face and back to back until . . . write it like that paper is your friend … starting and finishing are closer than they seem.” This advice I will pack away for those moments when nothing seems to come or when words tumble out formless and dull.
Her words in one poem after the other pour forth images that keep resonating through the hours, bringing comfort and challenging new views. Wild Canvas deserves to be read and savored.”
–Betty Staley
Alison Davis 