Todd Davis' "In the Kingdom of the Ditch"

Todd Davis' title poem in his book, In the Kingdom of the Ditch, requires several readings. The poem is only three couplets, but asks the reader to value and understand each word because of its brevity. The poem reads as one sentence, which forces each word to be dependent on the one preceding it. The first stanza doesn't make much sense without the second stanza and the second stanza does not stand independently from the third stanza. This form allows Davis to effectively use juxtaposition to communicate his theme. While he focuses on natural images, he contrasts that with man-made objects, such as lace, saucer and thimble.

From what I understood of the poem, I thought Davis was emphasizing the relationship between opposing or contrasting identities, and understanding how those play out in the natural world. The image of the shrew and the rat snake "seek[ing] after the same God," seems to draw from that theme. At his reading on Tuesday, Davis mentioned that violence is a part of nature, and not something we should necessarily condemn or dismiss as a negative thing because it is part of the way nature reproduces itself and maintains itself. I can see that idea very clearly in this poem, in that we see a predator and prey, who are still violent in some manner, but are both living with and within the natural world. From a Mennonite perspective, I think Davis is trying to speak to modern understandings of pacifism and offering a different perspective than the typical "violence is bad, peace is good," dichotomy. He complicates pacifism by offering that the natural world is violent, but not necessarily in a traumatic or destructive way.