In Climbing a Burning Rope, John Paul Davis focuses his peculiar imagination, philosophical lyricism, and misfit spiritual outlook on life in the hypercapitalist twenty-first century where the inscrutable logic of algorithms haunts our constantly connected selves. Celebrating the weird and wild, lamenting wounds and weariness, Davis’s poems carve out a space in which we can reclaim what is sacred and be reminded to keep something of ourselves for ourselves.  

John Paul Davis is the author of Crown Prince of Rabbits, and his poems have appeared in RATTLE, Bennington Review, Maine Review, MUZZLE, The Journal, and many others. His writing is informed by the many odd jobs he has held, including bike messenger, line cook, warehouse manager, roller-rink deejay, college professor, stablehand, paperboy, soundman, and bookseller, among others. He now works as a web developer and lives in New York City.