Dailies

If Big Bill Broonzy were crossed with Abbie Hoffman and William Gibson, and the resulting creature wrote wickedly funny, absurdly inventive poetry, his output might resemble that concocted by Davis in these poem-a-day disgorgings. Until recently an editor at New Directions, Davis wrote the poems of this first full-length collection, he says in a note, mostly at work, with a strict no-editing-after-midnight policy. That hurriedness comes through everywhere, giving the poems a New York School-like immediacy, yet without, in those selected for the book, a lapse into must-produce autopilot. Reeling backward over two years from a New Year's Eve (""12/31"") that begins ""let us now raise our cask and ask it/ how the showmen itemize the mighty// let us toast foist/ that libidinous inbred ibid,"" the poems cover a ridiculous amount of imaginative ground, from ""7/7""'s screed (""I hate a history of plumbing the way gay pastry thinks it's broccoli rabe"") to a hilariously bitchy O'Hara nod on ""9/30"" (""it's my lunch hour so i/ spit in the physiology of marriage""). Davis's unique idiom is a form of exhibitionaistic political meditation-a cross between O'Hara's ""intimate yell"" and Lenny Bruce's acidic social commentary-which comes in a cascade of satiric one-liners that slash through the hypocrisies of mid-90s prosperity: ""it's real manager fur/ we're all pledges in this/ fraternalistic competitiveness bless-a-thon""; ""litigants meet at king kullen/ to barter model lark""; ""that's one chunnel, six abandoned/ executive office blocks/ the takemitsu cassingle and balsa melon baller?"" Overstuffed references, multiply hyphenated words, polysyllabic train-wrecks and various staccatto effects abound, creating a Grand Central Station of somehow-endearing curses and brotherly, humanist caresses. Davis's cubically oppressed speaker, looking for love among the ruins of culture, is sure to find many sympathetic souls similarly caffeinated with yearning. (Jan.)