how the gods pour tea

From the elegiac to the playful, the poems in this seemingly effortless collection shift from a natural refinement to a nearly breathless elegance. How the gods pour tea abounds with departures: words and communities die, trout-lilies and passengers vanish, even the King and Queen of Fairies disappear. Some poems give simple weight to the details of everyday life; others evoke an imaginative world inhabited by giant beavers, elf-thugs, and the great caw-dragon. In poem after poem, there's a powerful imagination at work that blends observation and fancy, passion and playfulness, a hint of philosophy and a whiff of something serious yet spirited. Displaying a dexterity of tone and an understated bravura, Davies writes of the extremities of losing and then awakening "like the robin's egg broken in the grass, its emptiness new in the world."