Robert Murray Davis

Datos Biográficos

ID3625971
NOMBRERobert Murray Davis
NOMBRESRobert Murray
APELLIDODavis
FIRMADAVIS R M
AFILIACIONESUniversity of Oklahoma
VERIFICADONo
TOTAL DE OBRAS48
TOTAL DE CITAS5
TOTAL COMO AUTOR48
TOTAL COMO EDITOR0
PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN1968
AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN2018
ÍNDICE H1

  • Unfinished Sketches of a Revolution by Brane Mozetič

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2018

    appreciated for its place on the land / How can over 50,000 yrs mean nothing?” Amid the symbolic, ritual, architectonic performances of power in these texts, both poets regularly address one another directly, and in “Respect” Kinsella makes a thrilling disavowal: “Any rights I have over words I cede to you.” Here is a poet who actively creates space for another and, in so doing, interrogates his own position. Kinsella perhaps wishes more Australi…

  • Green Hills of Africa

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2016

    Fiction Ernest Hemingway. Green Hills of Africa. Patrick Hemingway, foreword. Seán Hemingway, intro. New York. Scribner. 2015. 281 pages. In this new edition of Green Hills of Africa, the introduction and, by implication, the apparatus—Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway’s diary; Hemingway’s letter making arrangements for the safari and notes while on safari; Hemingway’s letters to Esquire; and “Early Drafts and Deleted Passages”—are assembled to make the…

  • Moods & Women & Men & Once Again Moods

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2016

    bullet / And carve a little cross”; the implication may be clever but is clearly specious. What’s worse is a ten-page prose “poem” titled “Abecedarian,” which is often puerile in its interminable narrative about the development of fellatio between Adam and Eve. This strain of sexual puerility persists in other poems as well. In “The Astronomy of Bond Girls,” we read, “And the implacable black hole / At our galaxy’s core / Pussy Galore”; in a poem…

  • My Native Land A4 by Ana Blandiana

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2015

    tree”; neither has she, speaking openly about not having children. Like the bat who is “crippled [she is] determined / to survive,” and she is not afraid of it, as women living alone often are. She enjoys good-looking waiters but is shocked by the tattooed body of a waitress who is “a work of art,” rejecting the unfamiliar aspects of youth. Still, sexuality intrigues her, and she slips in an erotic poem, “Make Me Vera Wang,” about “Designer vagin…

  • American Smoke

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2015

    the world’s “universal language.” What defines (and sustains) a universal language , Mizumura argues, is its role as the primary purveyor of (global) knowledge, particularly among those for whom it is an external language (one written or read by a speaker of a different language). From this premise grows an impassioned plea to resist—but not overthrow, which may be impossible—the inexorable catholicizing effects of this hegemony. Mizumura’s exege…

  • The Confessions of a Number One Son

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2015

    58 WLT SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2015 deeds: “a blowup of those proportions sets unforeseen mechanisms in action, produces shock waves that in turn bring about bizarre developments, create misunderstandings , compel decisions . . . a maternity ward where new disasters are born.” The interplay of coincidence and consequence is a theme that underlies all that transpires in Bonita Avenue. For Siem, Joni, and Aaron, denying accountability for the consequen…

  • Polishing October

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2014

    reviews As he continues the drive home from work, August remembers even more details of his relationships with others during the three-season stay in the hospital. Through recalling his young yet sincere feelings for Lilo, he realizes that the isolation brought on by death revives his relationships with others. One crucial memory is his and Lilo’s reactions to the death of Hannelore, a female patient: “August remembers that Lilo didn’t sing the c…

  • The Master of Insomnia

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2014

    72 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews these waters in the future. In the elegy “Milonga for Dule Basarić,” his friend recalls ferrying people over the Sava or onto the river island beach. The poem “Turmoil” speaks of how the year is expected to be dry, both in terms of the weather and in the unsuccessful search for the Serbian Bosnian generals who have to be found for the sanctions on Serbia to end. But life goes on even under the turmoil of a diff…

  • Ariadne's Veil by Ioana Ieronim

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2014

    reviews The city of Kraków, where Davidson taught for a year as a Fulbright scholar, figures prominently in this collection . Strolling around Jordan Park, surrounded by the busts of esteemed Poles, including poets, the American poet experiences “history’s pulse,” perhaps without realizing that she herself wills that experience into being and is thus part of the commemoration. After all, she is, not unlike her heroine Mrs. Schmetterling, “Any cen…

  • Ljubljana Tales

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2013

    Rosario Izquierdo Chaparro. Diario de campo. Madrid. Caballo de Troya. 2013. isbn 9788415451204 Working women are the protagonists of Diario de campo, the first novel by Rosario Izquierdo Chaparro (b. 1963). The author is a sociologist and researcher of issues such as social exclusion and women’s work. In this novel, the central character is a sociologist who studies the social networks of young women in a slum of the Spanish city of Seville. Dur…

  • Siege 13 by Tamas Dobozy

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2013

    reviews Sietse de Vries. Bak. Ljouwert, Netherlands. Friese Pers. 2012. isbn 9789033002625 In this slim novel, Sietse de Vries continues to play with variations on the crime-novel formula. In Kugels foar Kant (see WLT, Oct. 2003, 126), the detective in search of the murderer is himself murdered. In Potstro Fongers (see WLT, Mar. 2010, 62), neither the motive for the crime nor its perpetrator is ever discovered. In Bak, the reader knows both the m…

  • What Light Can Do

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2013

    Amélie Nothomb Life Form Alison Anderson, tr. Europa When a successful, well-known French author engages in a prolonged correspondence with a troubled American fan, both of their identities are brought into question. Life Form is a probing exploration of the meaning of friendship and human connection. Amélie Nothomb skillfully constructs an absorbing maze of psychological entanglement and escape. Fumi Nakamura Enma the Immortal Neil Nadelman, tr.…

  • Arguably

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2012

    Julian Stannard The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli Salmon Poetry This is the last installment in poet Stannard ’s Genoese trilogy; Rina’s War and The Red Zone were the first and second collections in the series, respectively. With a voice and subjects that are distinctly British in nature, the poems in this collection span many of the major cities of Europe, including Paris, Rome, Bucharest, and Amsterdam . Stannard’s poems were fe…

  • Night Flight

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2012

    SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2012 73 Bernard Noël The Rest of the Voyage Eléna Rivera, tr. Graywolf Press Divided into three sections and written entirely in hendecasyllabic lines, The Rest of the Voyage is a reflection on travel, form, and how the way we write about what we observe can affect our experiences. This is the first volume of Noël’s poetry to be translated into English. Benjamin Moser Why This World Oxford University Press Clarice Lispector is s…

  • Lost Story by Brane Mozetič

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2012

    watching Gary Cooper movies and Extreme Makeover; Catherine of Siena is rendered as the first anorexic; Hell is a strip mall; Hades, its “Overlord, / politico, . . . sprawled in his corporate death,” runs a gym where shades torture themselves on endless treadmills, oblivious to the suffering of “bombed-on shrieking children,” and rumors of Persephone’s postabduction sexual appetite for Hades are used to justify his crime in the public eye. The se…

  • Bootleg Copy by Laurynas Katkus

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2012

    Geoffrey Hill. Clavics. London. Enitharmon (Dufour, distr.). 2011. isbn 9781907587115 Only a poet with a sense of time as expansive as Geoffrey Hill’s would attempt an elegy for a man dead almost four hundred years, as Hill does for the composer William Lawes. Yet Clavics is morethanalamentfortheloyalistcomposer slain in battle at Rowton Heath. It isameditationontimeandmemory,on faith and the struggle to believe. Hill’s poetry has always been all…

  • Plain of Jars and Other Stories by Geary Hobson , East Lansing (review)

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2011

    eventually do,"from theAmerican astronauts wholandedonthemoon in1969. AdrianLockheart is a middleaged psychologist who travelsto postwarSierraLeone in searchof something thatis missingin his lifein Englandand armedwitha genuinedesireto aid thewar-torn country. He believes"talktherapy" can helpthenation.Initially, Cole (whoisEuropean) isoneofthetwo patients Lockheart treats. Coleissuffering from pulmonary fibrosis, and "Hereinthelandofthemute, Eli…

  • Sex and the River Styx by Edward Hoagland, Howard Frank Mosher

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2011

    UnitedStatesand othercountries. Whilethemodernhistorical novel focuses onsocialchange andpolitical intrigue, inHeller's viewitis rather deficient on thesubjectoflove.In her opinion, the modern writer treats its characters withconsiderable skepticism , things notbeingwhatthey seem,and peoplehidingtheir true motives. Thebooksthatinterest Agnes Hellermostare thosewhichtake placeat a timeofa "suddentransformation of [a society's] view of history/' He…

  • Passionate Travelogue

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2011

    I uncover a conspiracy ofthecorrupt government andfollow itscultural andpolitical effects ina crumbling citystillweaklyproclaiming itself a utopia. Thepacingofthisnovelhelps to set it apartfroma quotidian flight of fancy.Valtatthrowshis reader headlong into the New Venetianexperience withoutany kindoflengthy, methodical explanationabouttheregion 'sculture, customs,or local lore. At times thecharacters refer to eventswith suchknowing ambiguity tha…

  • The Birth (And Death) of the Cool by Ted Gioia

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2010

    reigns," and "dark things" whose kingdom is "night." The collection depicts Yugosla via's violent death through ethnon ationalism. Repeated references to, and poems about, knives recall Dra skovic's banned 1982 novel, Knife, whose "Ballad of the Knife" paid sardonic tribute to Balkan fratri cide. In "Ten Fingers," the "hale and handsome criminal" who "talked like a crazy man, did crazy things," but for whom "Time races on, bear ing you along / to…

  • Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2010

    m > m ?s z m D H H D O papers on the desk are a settling of accounts, an indictment against Schepp for his neglect of her. In particular, several years earlier, the nearly blind Schepp had undergone laser surgery; able to see clearly, he joined theworld, became a fre quenter of bars, and became infatu ated with a low-life Polish barmaid on whose neck, moreover, was tat tooed the twenty-ninthI Ching sign "Kan," representing the abyss and also the …

  • Girl Crazy by Russell Smith

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2010

    Ii/|??^LEN PERKINS-VAUDEZ^j ^ Aauunuintu' uifi?yu!!R;im.ji^j- n un. m - j . u ji i j uiiiumia? mil t!B? H'UH^PPWPP^ southerners who bring their slave women with them under the pre tense of needing domestic assis tance. Mawu's master is a widower who "visited the women in the slave quarters even before his wife was dead." Lizzie's master never takes his wife with him. The language of the novel is poetic. Mawu chooses a spot for cooking her stew be…

  • Love Me Black or Love Me White by Agnes Arany, Adam Makkai

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2010

    Aleksandar Hemon's obstacles to love. Fiction, page 65 Heeduk Ra's poetry of partition. Verse, page 75 David Grossman's ethical compulsions. Miscellaneous, page 77 FICTION Kangni Alem. Esclaves. Paris. J.C. Lat tes. 2009. 260 pages. 18. isbn978-2 7096-3324-6 Esclaves, Kangni Alem's third novel, differsfromtheoften ironiccriticism of modern Togolese society found inhis Cola-Cola Jazz and Canailles et charlatans. Based on seven years of historical …

  • Forbidden Bread

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2010

    I, awake in their feverish, obsessive 1 delirium. , As translator, Daniel Shapiro 1 faced many challenges, including I abrupt shifts in formal and col 1 loquial diction as well as archaic I uses of Spanish that sent him look , ing to Shakespeare for some of the ' solutions in English. It is likely I that even many Chileans would 1 welcome Shapiro's unobtrusive, I comprehensive notes to these allu 1 sive poems. This book, in short, I has everythin…

  • Plates from the Museum of Time and Other Poems by Amir Or

    Robert Murray DavisARTICLEWorld Literature Today2010

    in the short poem "Betrayal/' the speaker admits, "Every man I ever knew / Iutterlybetrayed /with my joy in freedom." Poetry in translation is always problematic. Poet Jane Hoogestraat believes that "nuances are going to be lost inevitably; even so it is still important that theEnglish-speaking world has exposure to poetry writ ing inArabic." Helmy herself admits that "I believe that you cannot trans late poetry. . . .The translators must be crea…