You will not find Friendship, Texas; it now lies at the bottom of a lake of floodwater, forgotten. In Seven-Star Bird, David Daniel rescues the town's—and the poet's own family's—stories and memories, from an immigrant past and from the clutches of devastation. 

The small town of Friendship, Texas, was home to many Moravian/Czech farmers who had fled religious persecution in the last century. In the late 1960s, a dam was built to protect the more affluent communities along the river, which resulted in the loss of Friendship to the largest lakes in Texas. The population, including David's mother's family, was sent wandering once again. 

In a weaving of elliptical and elaborate voices, lyrics, and narratives, Daniel's debut collection—guided by Heraclitus—discovers an ethical, religious, and aesthetic antidote to the disasters of loss and disappointment, why the gods call down their inexplicable punishment, why we can never step into the same river twice.

"In 48 short lyrics, Ploughshares poetry editor David Daniel offers paeans to a Seven-Star Bird, a heartlanded creature that looked on as the speaker's family 'rivered these lands with abandon,' but can finally witness that they 'want no more than water does, low places/ To dwell and the gravity to change.' "
                                    —Publishers Weekly

ISBN: 1555973884
Graywolf Press, October 2003
Trade paperback original, $14.00, 72 pages

Publicity: J. Robbins, 651-641-0077, robbins@graywolfpress.org
Graywolf Press
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