Davis McCombs
Encyclopedia
Davis McCombs is an American poet. He attended Harvard University
as an undergraduate, the University of Virginia
as a Henry Hoyns Fellow, and Stanford University
as a Wallace Stegner
Fellow. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Ruth Lilly Poetry Foundation, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the Director of the Creative Writing Program, University of Arkansas
.
McCombs’ work appeared in The Best American Poetry 1996, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and other magazines and journals.
McCombs grew up in Munfordville, Kentucky
. From 1991-2001, he worked as a Park Ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park
.
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
as an undergraduate, the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
as a Henry Hoyns Fellow, and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
as a Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner
Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist, often called "The Dean of Western Writers"...
Fellow. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Ruth Lilly Poetry Foundation, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the Director of the Creative Writing Program, University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...
.
McCombs’ work appeared in The Best American Poetry 1996, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and other magazines and journals.
McCombs grew up in Munfordville, Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
. From 1991-2001, he worked as a Park Ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park
Mammoth Cave National Park
Mammoth Cave National Park is a U.S. National Park in central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. The official name of the system is the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System for the ridge under which the cave has formed. The park was established...
.
Awards
- 2005 Larry Levis Editor’s Prize by The Missouri Review for a sixteen-part sequence of poems called “Tobacco Mosaic”
- 2005 Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award from Willow Springs for his poem “Rossetti in 1869”
- 2005 Joy Bale Boone award from Wind magazine’s for a poem called “Noodling.”
- 2005 Dorset Prize, chosen by Linda Gregerson
Works
- EchoRiver, Poem Hunter
- Star Chamber, Poem Hunter
- Visitations, Poem Hunter
- Candlewriting; Star Chamber; Visitations, National Endowment for the Arts
- Tobacco Mosaic, The Missouri Review, Volume 28, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2005
Reviews
McCombs is an intelligent, focused poet who always aims to match a poem’s intellectualism with emotional depth, and Dismal Rock is a proud testament to his ability.
It's difficult not to take cues from a title, such as that of Davis McCombs’ second book of poems, which suggests a certain lack of hope. I found the difficulty compounded as I plunged into the benighted landscape of the volume and its first section, the sequence “Tobacco Mosaic.” This sequence, named after “a disease affecting plants of the tobacco family,” settles itself in the environs of Edmonson County, Kentucky, where McCombs was raised.