The Museum Of Good Tries by Brad Davis “there is only the trying” Like every last second dropkick that splits the uprights. Or the glorious fifth section of Eliot’s East Coker. Or Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor. I nominate J. Berryman’s Eleven Addresses to the Lord, and leave his Dream Songs for another’s vote. I wonder, when the One who made me well makes all things new, whether there will be a museum on that fine earth for revisiting our best attempts. The list of what would fail to qualify feels endless: like whatever aims at contravening Creator’s will to right all earthly wrongs and thereby free the cosmos for continuing on its course toward divination. Or is it flattery to attribute to our infinitesimal kind the power to hold it back? Then why else the Incarnation?
Brad Davis is a Canadian-American poet living in northeastern Connecticut. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Vallum, Traces, Image, Poetry magazine, The Paris Review, JAMA, Puerto del Sol, Brilliant Corners, Spiritus, and many other journals. Brad’s most recent collection is On the Way to Putnam: New, Selected, & Early Poems (Grayson, 2024).
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