Fruit from a Wild Orchard
New and Selected Poems by David Lavar Coy
Fruit from a Wild Orchard selects from poems written over four decades – from the 1980s to the present – by a quintessentially Western American poet. David Lavar Coy was raised on a ranch in Wyoming, earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas, taught writing for many years in Yuma, Arizona, and made his home in Tucson where he lived until he passed away in April 2022. Coy’s poems are rich in detail, varied in tone, and masterful in their use of metaphor. You will savor the taste of this Fruit for a long time.
From Fruit from a Wild Orchard
Pears Like Golden Buddhas
After waiting all summer
for the pears to grow sweet,
he was called away
by a friend’s slow death,
the week the fruit turned yellow,
a double loss.
Now the trees are thick
with blossoms. Bees swarm
their boughs. The sky glows
yellow. Life goes on, he knows,
like an avalanche of rotted fruit
scattered in an orchard.
Like old blossoms
assuaged by new blossoms.
Review
There are many surprising and fine fruits in David Coy’s new poetry collection, Fruit from a Wild Orchard. From the first poem to the last, the reader is struck by the human sympathy that extends to our fellow creatures – as large as the bear, as small as the moth. Early on the poet says, “human breathing is my heavy song,” but as we see and feel throughout, the song has many intonations including the lightness of being.
Barry Wallenstein
Author of It’s About Time
More from Ex Ophidia Press
Ghost Heart
Mary Pinard
Winner of our 2021 Poetry Contest, this collection engages science and cultural history to explore the complex nature of the vanishing American prairie.
To Speak in Salt
Becky Thompson
For many years, Becky Thompson has brought poetry to refugees in Greece, and they have brought poetry to her. To Speak in Salt is a testimony to that exchange, packed with poems keenly observing people and places where “barbed wire doubles as a fence / a clothesline for diapers.”
Rosetta
Karina Borowicz
In this collection, winner of the 2019 poetry prize, noted poet Karina Borowicz creates a world within a world. The poems range over many aspects of life, yet are connected by a sense of coherence, continuity, and deeper meaning.
A Bird Who Seems to Know Me
Wally Swist
The connections between humans and birds are the central focus of the 2018 Poetry Prize winner. Wally Swist brings into focus, through poems and haiku written in the clarity of pure, direct language, the wildness that is often invisible in the urban landscape.
Rembrandt's Nose
Charles Wyatt
The poems in Charles Wyatt’s 2017 Poetry Prize winning collection conjure up Rembrandt and his world in clear, compelling poetry that paints a portrait of the great painter in words.