Ultima Thule

Davis McCombs's poems vividly evoke a strange and fantastic landscape. Kentucky's Mammoth Cave and the world above it are so fundamental to the narrator's voice and the poet's that it is as if all these elements are of a piece. What a tremendous debut!

Recently I spent an extended vacation exploring Mammoth Cave National Park. I was amazed at the vastness and calm of the place. It has a grandeur and a haunting quality. Amidst it all I made another discovery: the powerful, in truth--the GREAT--poetry of Davis McCombs.Somewhere in his evocations of place and suggestions of identity McCombs finds a beauty much like that of the caves. For the most part it isn't flashy. It is solid. It calls. It is true.I'm not a huge fan of "narrative" poems. Most such literary beasts should become brave and full enough to stand as short stories. The language and, God help us, rhymes are more torture in such cases than poetry. Yet here in McCombs we have a master of narrative not seen on these shores since Poe.More powerful than his narrative skills is McCombs's spareness of language. He communicates picture perfect verbal images with the dead-on certainty of phrase of a John Ashbery. He also does it without having to resort to Ashbery's often droning, lengthy verbosity.My favorite thing about Ultima Thule is the sense of camraderie in McCombs's poetry. We journey into candlelit depths and to solitary gravesites. Yet we are not alone. The sense of brotherhood in these poems rivals the best of Whitman and Baudelaire.Poe, Ashbery, Whitman and Baudelaire--these are some of my favorite poets. They are some of the greatest who ever lived. With Ultima Thule Davis McCombs joins their number.

Davis McCombs is a man of many gifts: phrase, metaphor, story, imagery, message and even wisdom--an unexpected gift from the winner of a literary prize recognizing the work of "younger" poets. Consider his reflection on fame:"But fame,like the fire in the hearth, must be fed:a bundle of twigs soon needs a log to stayalight. And then full thirty cords of oak."There is irony in McCombs music. The poet's voice, his voice, is emancipated when he finds the voice of a slave, Stephen Bishop, who worked as a guide and explorer of Mammoth Cave (Kentucky) from 1839 to 1849-- 140 years before Davis McCombs took the same job.Like Stephen Bishop, Davis McCombs' leads tours through "the dark country" providing his readers with light and music along the way.If talent were trees, then Davis McCombs' talent is oak and he has a full thirty cords on hand; and maybe more.

How beautiful to listen to slave/cave guide Stephen Bishop reflect on life through the continued metaphor of the cave. Yes, the voice belongs to a contemporary white university man, but the words are so real and the thoughts as deep as the bottomless chasms he describes. Thank you to WS Merwin for choosing such a poet, who does not dwell on the vulgar and the ugly as so many do, but instead drinks in beauty.

It seems to me that Davis McCombs's Ultima Thule has something particularly and refreshingly American about it. His writing shows a real craftsman's touch and sureness of hand. This remarkable book of poems is more than a reflection on the natural wonder of Kentucky's caves, it is a rare and mysterious exploration of the human spirit past and present.