"When we die
may we be a pleasing word
placed in the mouth
of the world."
from Taxonomy

Yeah, the cover reeled me in. Who can resist a trash panda who's ready for his closeup?

Todd Davis writes nature poetry with an attitude. His vignettes dwell on the beauty and cruelty of both the natural world, and the lives of its inhabitants. The words "visceral" and "gritty" come to mind.

"Five seedlings have sprung up along one of the logs, nursing decay like piglets down a sow's length, or like
an infant in a desert village suckling
a mother's breast, oblivious to the murmur
of planes crossing overhead."
from Nurse Log

There are some of these poems I want to reread every day, and others I never want to see again due to the horrifying imagery they conjure.

My favorites were the few unabashedly romantic poems, this one in particular, as I'm a long-married person:

"My love and I sleep naked in the returned warmth,
hands draped over the round flesh of a long marriage,
over the pleasure we take in each other's aging bodies."
from Decadence

And . . .

"I drown happily in the sweetness
of your company."
from After Twenty-Seven Years of Marriage

Life and death, verdant abundance and decay. I definitely felt alive while reading these poems.
I've already decided to buy a hardback copy as a birthday present to myself.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

Ditch Memory is a collection of poetry all centred around nature and the natural world around us. The book contains thirty poems, which include themes around generational trauma, neglected lives, the threats of extinction and climate issues to name but a few. Unfortunately, I found the poems a bit hit and miss. Whilst some I could connect to, I found more that I couldn't connect to, and I was left feeling a little disappointed as I'd had high hoped for this collection. But this is just my experience, and if you enjoy poetry like this or have enjoyed this authors poetry before, do give it a read.

Publishing date: 01.08.2024
Thank you to Netgalley and Michigan State University press for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

The book as a meal: The whole family is gathered outside for a birthday party, the chocolate cake for the birthday kid is half eaten, and now the adults are fighting over something that happened so long ago
The book left me: Wondering what kind of generational trauma my family has

Negatives:
Some poems felt a little repetitive or too similar to each other
Lost some focus the further into the book you went

Positives:
Strong nature vibes
Very raw, wild, and emotional

Features:
Themes of nature, aging, and dying, different formatted poems

Why did I choose this one?
I thought nature themed poems sounded like an absolute treat. I had heard about this author's work before and how "raw" everything he wrote was, so I had to get a taste.

Pick-up-able? Put-down-able?
In-between. Some poems almost "dragged" a little. Eventually the book lost some focus, and my attention with it. Suddenly, a certain trigger popped up and soured my mood a little. But, I kept coming back and finished on a strong note.

What was the vibe and mood?
It has a very wild feeling to it. The emotions are raw and strong. I felt both unsafe and like fleeing, and then very serene and accepting of my nature. It smelled like rain and damp forest floors. But, also like alcohol and dust.

Final ranking and star rating?
B tier, 3 stars. I liked this collection a lot, but it dragged down a little with the repetitiveness and the length and "chunkiness" of some of the poems. I think I may not be the correct person to read a collection like this. A little too depressing and a little too "raw" for me. But I will recommend this to some other people I know.

Favorite poems:
Free Write
Vernal Pond
The Doctor asks my Friend to Follow the Light at the End of her Pen
Coffin Honey
In the Garden
Sitting Shiva
How our names turn into Light
Gnosis
Taxonomy
Crow counsels me in the ways of Love

When I first read Coffin Honey in 2021, I was awed by how beautiful — how lush, how visceral and cutting the poems were through Davis’s observations of humans and nature. Now, I’m awed again by Ditch Memory where new and old poems are brought together in this gorgeously put-together collection.

Every poem here is so vivid, so emotional and complex that this collection is practically alive. The cadence of the lines as I read them silently and out loud, the gorgeous imagery that easily weaves itself together in my mind’s eye, the multitude of meanings each poem could hold. Although I lacked familiarity with some of the historical events, movies and such, I still couldn’t stop myself from reading and rereading each stanza, savouring the tender and nuanced observations of man and nature, life and death, ideal and reality.

Among my favourites from this collection are:
– April Prayer
– From a Stray Dog Near the Paper Mill in Tyrone, Pennsylvania
– The Taxidermist’s Daughter Retrieves a Head
– This Shared Life
– After Twenty-Seven Years of Marriage
– Native Species
– By the Rivers of Babylon
– Taxonomy
– A Prayer for My Sons, After a Line of Reported Conversation by the Poet William Blake to a Child Seated Next to Him at a Dinner Party

My favourite in this was "Accident". I did feel like the collection lost its focus on nature as the poems went on, but nonetheless an enjoyable read.

I did not think the description of this book fit what I was reading in these pages. This book, for me, was almost depressing. I found very little of nature in the pages. I thank NetGalley and Michigan State University Press for the advance read.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Michigan State University Press for the eARC of this collection.**

There were so many incredible poems in this collection that felt like sitting by a stream and watching the day tick by. I loved the reflections on life and the passage of time, and even the darker side of things.

Todd Davis uses beautiful imagery but also human nature to show what the natural world is, and how we as humans have an impact on it. This collection was the perfect length with just enough variety to sit and thumb through it in one sitting. Perfect for reading in a hammock, or around a fire!

Thanks to NetGalley and Michigan State University Press for the ARC!

Todd Davis’s "Ditch Memory" is a balmy collection of poems that are largely contained to the natural world, disinterested in the weightlessness of abstraction.

The best way to describe this book is to imagine sitting in the middle of the woods, completely free of distractions. With time, your senses sharpen and you become aware of everything you’ve never noticed—the way termites bring a rotten log back to life; the tea-like dampness you can smell in the soil; the bird songs that seem to accentuate rather than dull the silence.

Some readers may feel frustrated that there isn’t “more” to this collection or that the use of nature isn’t more metaphorical, but I appreciate the way Davis frames it here—it isn’t a backdrop; it’s everything. When daily, human concerns surface in the poems, they feel like an interruption. Even tragedy is manageably small when there are still bears at play in the forest. This isn’t to say that the speaker is flippant about these subjects, but he certainly puts them in perspective. An excellent example of this approach is in “Wayfaring,”a piece that prioritizes gentleness as modeled by the fragility of the natural world. Elsewhere, we see this theme extended to thoughtful calls for ecological accountability.

That said, a few of these poems are truly shocking in their brutality, such as “dream elevator” and its focus on sexual assault. Here, we see nature as the executor of justice, so it still thematically aligns with the collection as a whole, but it left a bad taste in my mouth to see such a sensitive subject used almost purely as an aesthetic feature. Likewise, I think the book loses some focus because of its length, which is understandable because many of these poems are collected from prior books. It’s just unfortunate that a few of the standout poems get buried because of it.

All in all, this is a wonderful collection in all its mournful, celebratory appreciation of the world. Todd Davis has a remarkable ability to write poems that are approachable and substantive, and this is a book I will certainly revisit in the future.