This debut collection by Cave Canem fellow Geffrey Davis burrows under the surface of gender, addiction, recovery, clumsy love, bitterness, and faith. The tones explored—tender, comic, wry, tragic—interrogate male subjectivity and privilege, as they examine their "embarrassed desires" for familial connection, sexual love, compassion, and repair. Revising the Storm also speaks to the sons and daughters affected by the drug/crack epidemic of the '80s and addresses issues of masculinity and its importance in family. Some nights I hear my father's long romance with drugs echoed in the skeletal choir of crickets. Geffrey Davis holds an MFA and a PhD from Penn State University. A Cave Canem fellow, Davis is the recipient of the 2013 Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry, the 2012 Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and the 2013 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He currently teaches at the University of Arkansas. In her introduction to Davis’ first collection, poet Dorianne Laux (The Book of Men, 2012) describes it as one of the best first books she has read. High praise. Thematically, Davis hits some strong subjects: missing fathers, marriage and divorce, early years and rebirth, all painful twists of reality and even sentimentality that make families too close for comfort yet often beyond reach. Organized in three sections—The Book of the Father, Diaspora, and Here a Coursing Wall—Davis’ poems are sweeping, lyrical glimpses into masculinity, violence, drug use, and history. These poems are fresh and well-chiseled in word and line, as in Unfledged: During those hard, / gloved hours under the sun’s weight, I studied / my father, from the ground—the distance he kept / between us his version of worry. This work gave him / chance to patch over his latest night in county jail, to shout / over something other than his drug-heavy belly song. Davis, a gifted wordsmith, presents a wonderfully complex and entertaining debut. --Mark Eleveld Finalist for the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry Winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize One of Library Journal 's "Thirty Amazing Poetry Titles for Spring 2014" Winner of the 2013 Anne Halley Poetry Prize “ Revising the Storm is one of the best first books I’ve read in a good while. Its subjects―childhood, an absentee father, marriage, divorce, re-marriage, birth―are not new, but the approach is fresh, the language lyrical, and the poems well-tuned and masterfully wrought. Geffrey Davis is spellbinding. Like a fine artist, he knows how to bring even the smallest heartbreaking detail to light.” ― Dorianne Laux “Thematically, Davis hits some strong subjects: missing fathers, marriage and divorce, early years and rebirth, all painful twists of reality and even sentimentality that make families too close for comfort yet often beyond reach … Davis’ poems are sweeping, lyrical glimpses into masculinity, violence, drug use, and history.” ― Booklist “Acutely aware of myriad meanings to each assertion and of the many versions of each story, these poems are strongest where they push through poetic narrative about personal experience to create poetry where storytelling itself is subverted … Continuously challenging himself to ‘[t]ell it right this time,’ Davis displays an elegant tenacity that begs to be unleashed on subjects beyond personal history.” ― Publishers Weekly “Never prosaic but always knowable, the collection is in itself a storm that passes slowly but never disappears entirely … It is a feat for Davis to create so much tenderness here without being precious. All his subjects, even the loathsome ones, are beloved. All his speakers are filled with hope, always seeking a new definition for humane, constantly revising the storms inside themselves.” ― The Rumpus One of five “sizzling books you must slip into your travel bag this summer.” ― AMTRAK, National Railroad Passenger Corporation "A mother crying alone in her kitchen, a hungry boy unable to sleep in his bed, the unbearable weight cast by an absent father―these quotidian and universal miseries are by no means exclusive to the world of poetry, but when rendered in verse by a talented poet such as Davis, readers bare witness with new eyes. Revising the Storm is a considerable collection replete with the dark troubles and misfortunes of life that only serve to make its moments of beauty that much brighter." ― LA Review “This is a book of poems for those who believe in the cathartic power of poetry and its ability to render meaning from pain. Despite its lagging moments, Revising the Storm succeeds at transforming loss and grief into something worth sharing, and beyond any discussion of Davis’s romantic conceits or clever self-reflexivity, doesn’t that matter more? After all, if poetry can’t save us from our suffering, what can?” ― Zone 3 "What is most striking about the poems, individually and as a group, is their ability to maintain calm