Boswell Book Company
UW-Milwaukee Honors College instructor David Southward teaches literature, film and comics. He’s also a prolifically published poet. His latest collection, Bachelor’s Buttons, is drawn from work previously published in dozens of journals and anthologies. Southward’s words are solid and chosen carefully, like the cathedral stones of a medieval artisan. The elliptical nature of his focused observations sometimes recalls William Carlos Williams; in more metaphysical moments, another William, by the name of Blake, comes to mind.
For his latest collection of poems, he chose as his topic one of history’s—and mythology’s—most significant figures, Jesus. His Apocrypha is (perhaps after William Carlos Williams?) a seamless convergence of the dignified and the vernacular, rhythmic in its quick storytelling. And those stories are familiar, yet the perspectives are sometimes unusual. Mary Magdalene complains about the words men put into her mouth, and Judas argues that “without the likes of me, his tortured faith would have no poetry.”
Southward will read from Bachelor’s Buttons at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 26, at Boswell Book Co.
