Graduating seniors poet Amalia Tenuta and pianist Ssuyuan Wang have been honored for their exceptional contributions to the performing and creative arts on campus.
Swan Song
Durham, NC: Bull City Press, 2020. 40 pages. $12.00.
In my first encounter with Armen Davoudian, the poet was already saying goodbye. “Wake-Up Call,” an elegant sonnet that is both self-elegy and familial love poem, describes with a disembodied intimacy Davoudian’s parents preparing breakfast, only to discover that he has disappeared:
I can hear
around my head, against the coming light,
for any moment now they will open the door
and lift the covers and find that I’m not there.
What I would come to admire the most in Davoudian’s debut collection
Swan Song is concentrated in these concluding lines: a voice at once direct and elliptical, simultaneously announcing itself as inaugural and valedictory.