Bending Light with Bare Hands is a direct response to Covid lockdown and all the insecurities and frustrations that accompanied compulsory isolation. The poems in this collection each begin with a singular event of nagging thought that gets woven into larger associative tapestries, a journal of verse addressing existence though personal experience.
Themes of apocalypse, of the battles of darkness and light, and of struggles with traditional/familial beliefs emerge from suburban landscapes and childhood memories of a rural upbringing. From the author's fear of losing his vision to cataracts, to his knowledge of the world through the superstitions of his ancestors, to his obsession with weather, these poems pull from the mundane and the supernal and the mystical in order to celebrate the world as a constant in our ever-changing lives.
About the Author :
David B. Prather's first collection, We Were Birds, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing in 2019. He has another full-length poetry collection, Shouting at an Empty House, forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. He served as a juror for Ohio State Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour's anthology, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio's Appalachian Voices. He is a past president of West Virginia Writers, Inc., a statewide non-profit organization. He taught English Composition, American Literature, and Creative Writing at West Virginia University at Parkersburg and English Composition at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. He also served as poetry editor for Confluence Literary Journal and for Tantra Press, and he hosted the Blennerhassett Reading Series. He currently serves as a reader for Suburbia Journal. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review, Seneca Review, Prairie Schooner, The American Journal of Poetry, The Literary Review, Poet Lore, and others. His work has also appeared in many anthologies, including Voices from the Fierce Intangible World (from South Florida Poetry Journal) and Endlessly Rocking: Poems in Honor of Walt Whitman's 200th Birthday (Unbound Content, Englewood, New Jersey). He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York, and he appeared in a couple of local (West Virginia/Ohio) independent movies. He received his MFA from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. And he lives in the town where he was born-Parkersburg, West Virginia.
Review :
The poems in David B. Prather's second full-length collection, Bending Light with Bare Hands, are woven from thunderstorms, omens, insomnia-even the telltale signs of a body in slow decline. With language that manages the oxymoronic feat of being both concise and lavish, the poet takes an unflinching look at subjects that include depression, loneliness, and the longing to hold on to memories, even while acknowledging their unreliable nature. If Prather puts his faith in anything, it is in the gods of this world, who inhabit the bodies of hummingbirds, katydids, bats, and mockingbirds, who weave their beds with bindweed and ivy, and write in the luminescent script of fireflies, constellations, and even headlights. This collection quickly and unrelentingly distinguishes itself, elevating the quotidian into meditations on love, mortality, and mental health. Prather is a poet who has hit his stride. I have seldom been more pleased to lend my name to a book's cover.
Frank Paino, author of Obscura
Written throughout the pandemic, this essential journal of poems is an intimate account of restless days spent attempting hope on the south side of Parkersburg, West Virginia. A sense of impending doom, rendered though it is with wonder, wit, and wounded amusement, lingers long after lockdown. "Every little ache in the body/ becomes a symptom" that cannot be ignored; every little sliver of light seems a reprieve, yet it remains "hard not to believe we/ are being punished." In a world that all too often "refuses to give us/ what we need," Prather masterfully melds myth and memory, fire-and-brimstone brow-beatings, folklore, flawed family legacies, and the bittersweet lessons of a lifetime into luminous verse that verges on salvation.
Randi Ward, author of Whipstitches
Bending Light with Bare Hands, David B. Prather's sophomore collection, illuminates in a world of shadows. Moving seamlessly from the everyday to the deepest questions of our time, Prather is as comfortable growing heirloom tomatoes and cooking his grandmother's vegetable soup as he is grappling with dark matter and the injustices of species extinction. "If I had wings, I would be a nightbird, and I would sing to bring down the stars" he writes. No need for such dramatic transformation-these poems sing and leave us basking in their glow.
Denton Loving, author of Tamp
