The Last Beast We Revel in

An unflinching look at the intimate, dwindling natural world and our desire for human connection.

Noah Davis’s The Last Beast We Revel In coalesces around love for one’s romantic partner, family, community, and the natural world. As the Appalachian Mountains continue to suffer from environmental catastrophes and abuses, the need to discover joy within the human and greater-than-human world is essential. In these poems, we travel with black bears and brook trouts, exploring old tunnel mines, summer rivers, the remains of meth houses, and tasting the sweetness of August tomatoes. Davis’s poems balance revery, mourning, lust, and love while wading the rivers and meandering through the deep hollows of Appalachia’s enduring landscape.

Noah Davis’s first collection, Of This River, won the Wheelbarrow Emerging Poet Book Prize from Michigan State University’s Center for Poetry, and his poems and prose have appeared in The Sun, Southern Humanities Review, Best New Poets, Orion, The Year’s Best Sports Writing, North American Review, and River Teeth among others. He lives with his wife, Nikea, in Missoula, Montana.