GLOVER DAVIS, AN ORIGINAL FRESNO POET
by Stephen Barile
If you turned to Page 27 in the long out-of-print anthology of Fresno poets, Down at the Santa Fe Depot, you would find a picture of a handsome young man with abundant dark blond hair named Glover Davis, and you would find his already impressive poems. He seems almost out-of-place with his friendly smile, athletic build and almost Ivy League coat and sweater, there in a farm town standing next to a train station among this assortment of dire looking writers. But Davis’ poetry deserved its place in that collection of the work of nineteen other poets in the anthology first published in 1970. Davis was part of a second wave of young poets who studied with Philip Levine at Fresno State College, several of whom were anthologized in the Santa Fe Depot collection.
Levine was hired as an associate professor to teach English composition at Fresno State in 1958, but during his tenure his ambitions led to the creation of one of the foremost undergraduate poetry writing programs in the country. Davis and his fellow classmates, including Herbert Scott and William Childress, went on to become nationally recognized and critically acclaimed poets and educators.
Glover Davis was born in San Luis Obispo, raised in Santa Cruz, and came to Fresno State in 1960 because his sister went there and because a state college tuition was something his modest means at the time could support. He happened upon a poetry writing class taught by Levine and discovered both his love of verse and his future vocation. Several years later, Davis met and married Sandra Avakian, a Fresno native and a secretary in the Fresno State English Department office. Armed with good advice from Levine, Davis did graduate work at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the best graduate poetry-writing program in the country. While he was at Iowa, one of Davis’ classmates was C. G. Hanzlicek who went on to teach poetry writing at Fresno State until his retirement in 2001. After Davis graduated, he was hired to teach at San Diego State University in 1966. He retired Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing in 2004 after 39 years. Shortly thereafter, Glover and Sandy returned to Fresno. Sandra died in 2009. Davis currently lives in Coarsegold.
One of the reasons for Davis’ return to Fresno was to be part of the poetry community that still thrives here. It was easy to live here, a place of family and friends, and a nurturing community of poets. Philip Levine, even after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry, continues to live in Fresno because of the camaraderie and lifelong friendships he has developed with Fresno poets.
Glover Davis’ most recent book of poems titled Spring Drive, will be released this fall in the Ash Tree Poetry Series of Fresno Poets, published by Tebot Bach, a non-profit literary press, and edited by Fresno native and poet David St. John.
Davis’s earlier books include Separate Lives, published by Pecan Grove Press in 2007, Bandaging Bread (1970), August Fires (1978) and Legend (1988). Davis’s poems have appeared in such prestigious publications as the Southern Review, Poetry, and the New England Review.
Louis L. Martz, writing in the Yale Review, described Separate Lives as “Tense, disciplined and sapient.” In The Chariton Review, poet Christopher Buckley said the poems have “nuance and resonance and reward several readings.” Wesleyan University Press called Davis’s poetry “powerful, magical [and] transforming.”
Though his hair has turned completely white, Davis maintains his youthful enthusiasm for poetry and poetry writing. As one of an early group of Fresno poets, an original, Glover Davis still finds Fresno a place for poetry.
Glover Davis will be reading his poetry at The Poets of Fresno: Summer Reading Series, 2010, on Tuesday, July 27, 2010, at the Revue Café 920 East Olive Avenue in Fresno’s Tower District to raise funds for the The Ash Tree Poetry Series of Fresno Poets. The reading starts at 7:00. There is a $5 suggested donation at the door.
