If you are thirsty it is too late

But if there may be gradations of thirst

There was this sweet bolt new bark grew around

And new shapes to lock bikes to

Could it matter what the confetti is made of

Asparagus by the road

A child made a radio by resting anything in a creek

An acrobat didn’t love me

Through intent observation and fractured glances, the poems in Daybed make everyday elements--yard, bicycle, sidewalk, and breeze--feel elemental. Their consideration of longing, convalescence, and the pleasures of ordinary astonishment is both environmental and emotional. Savich’s dedication to attentive, restless lyricism shows what it might look like to at once ‘say this is heaven / and there is no heaven.’ Daybed lives in that contradiction’s autumnal warmth.

Zach Savich’s recent books include  the memoir Diving Makes the Water Deep  and the poetry collections The Orchard Green and Every Color and Century-Swept Brutal, the latter also published by Black Ocean. He teaches in the BFA Program for Creative Writing at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and co-edits Rescue Press’s Open Prose Series.

Praise for Zach Savich

“In his spare sixth collection, Savich crafts vibrant images of the natural world and stirring reinterpretations of the everyday. . . . Savich’s relaxed idylls are an effective balm against the rigid narratives and literalism of the real world, and his conviction is reassuring: ‘Beloved, the world/ is still around. I’ve seen it/ in a threadbare blouse.’”

—Publishers Weekly

“Landscape and self, outside and in, a damp marsh and the clotting components of blood cells—Savich’s minimal lyricism amplifies the import and relationship of each image, like the slow wash of the body extending into its own landscape.”

—Kenyon Review

“Savich so deftly manages and manipulates language that he may be considered a genius of the postmodern. His way of seeing the world is both fresh and innovative. In these poems the mystery of life contends with the mystery of death. What we know and how we know it depends on poetic veracity and eyes that are wide open to the nuances of reality.”

—The Journal

“Savich uses the glance as a compositional element. . . . Provision, transience, and frailty are woven into these poems, which move like boats over the surface of their subjects.”

—Entropy