Alumnus Adam O. Davis '06 Launches Poetry Debut 'Index of Haunted Houses'

Alumnus Adam O. Davis ’06 will promote his forthcoming poetry debut Index of Haunted Houses with a hotline that allows curious readers to interact with the book, which itself is concerned with old telephone technologies. The collection is the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, from Sarabande Books.

Index of Haunted Houses is a book of ghost stories, writes the book’s publisher Sarabande. “...and for the most part, ghosts are jealous monsters, intent upon our destruction. They never appear overtly here, yet we gradually become aware of the spirits in haunted houses in the way they tread over creaky floors, slam doors, and issue sudden gusts of wind. These poems are Koan-like—the fewer the words, the more charged they are… Index of Haunted Houses is spooky and sad—a stunning debut, one that will surprise, convince, and most of all, delight.”

Davis says that the oldest poem in this collection dates to his thesis workshop with Associate Professor Timothy Donnelly, who said Davis’s book is, “Hypervigilant, fidgety, and frightened as it should be, Index of Haunted Houses nonetheless shows us how to rake through the rubble for what we might still rebuild with, and in its consummate achievement, generates flashes of much heretofore unseen beauty, unleashing phrases that ‘arc like / swans in (the) cochlea’s / cul-de-sac.’”

Many of the manuscript’s earliest poems were written during the Great Recession. The concept of the haunted house solidified amid those days and months during which many had no choice but to abandon their homes. As time went on, he added poems that explored corporate synecdoche, like a Kleenex standing in for a tissue. “In writing on this, I was confronted with how much of my own life–and all the nostalgia I hold for it–is defined by branding and how that nostalgia is both fully authentic and a third-party construct (not unlike my beloved Levi's),” Davis said. “So, in short, it's a book about possession and being possessed and everything that those words suggest about our American experience.”

Of the hotline, Davis said, “I've long held an obsession with antique telephone technologies and, given that the women who voiced The Bell System's automated messages appear in several of the poems in Index of Haunted Houses, I thought it would be interesting to create a 'phone tree' wherein the caller could have an interactive experience with the book. I came up with the idea last summer and Sarabande was very supportive of it, though the process of creating it was trickier than expected. It turns out that telephony is a math unto itself—and math's never come easy to me—but eventually I crafted something that I hope will give the listener a feel for the book along with offering them a connection to a more analog mode of communication.”

You can call the hotline at this number: 619-329-5757