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Angel of the Waters

poems by David Denny

In his third full-length collection, David Denny sings a variety of odes to rescue pups and window spiders, angels and freight trains, Starbucks and the Beatles, film noir actors and post-impressionist painters. In a world besieged by bullies and braggarts, Denny’s poetry creates a refuge for the meek, a kind of Zen calm in the eye of the storm. Unique among North American writers, he makes his gentle stand in the heart of the suburban wilderness, excavating the extraordinary within the ordinary, holding up small shiny bits of treasure among the seemingly expansive hodgepodge of invasive junk.

POETRY / General

ISBN: 978-1-962082-09-9 (print; softcover; perfect bound)

LCCN: 2023948005

Released 10-31-2023

150 pages

Author Biography

David Denny is a poet and fiction writer. His books include the poetry collections Some Divine Commotion and Fool in the Attic, as well as the short story collections Sometimes Only the Sad Songs Will Do and The Gill Man in Purgatory. His work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including The Sun, Narrative, Catamaran, Rattle, and Parabola. He holds an MFA degree from the University of Oregon. Honors include The Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Contest, The Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, The Center for Book Arts Broadside Award, Silicon Valley Artist Laureate, and numerous Pushcart Prize nominations. He lives in California with his wife, Jill, and their Belgian Shepherd Ginny.

Endorsements

“The lonesome speaker in David Denny’s Angel of the Waters has a sometimes companion, a philosopher-poet named Ginny, a rescue pup. But Denny is the rescued one. He learns about the world by watching Ginny groove down the sidewalk to the cool rhythms of Miles Davis or helping Paul Cezanne through a crisis moment with one of his paintings. It’s good to have such a friend as a teacher. It’s even better to be reading the poetry of one wise enough to learn in such a way.”
—Nils Peterson, Inaugural Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County, author of All the Marvelous Stuff (Caesura Editions)

“In these remarkable poems, David Denny invites us to stand with him ‘in the sanctuary of the moment,’ moments of wonder and moments of despair. Whether delighting in the parables of Ginny the rescue dog, kvetching at Starbucks, pondering Buddha’s great belly, or confronting humanity’s capacity for evil as ‘the disease we carry in our skulls,’ Denny reveals a ‘sampling of the wide world.’ His clear-eyed observations stir up something necessary in the reader and warn us to ‘get busy living.’ Call it courage, call it hope. In Angel of the Waters, you will find both.
—Sally Ashton, author of Listening to Mars (Cornerstone Press) and The Behaviour of Clocks (WordFarm)