Final Inventory by David Anthony Sam

About the Book: Final Inventory contains the deeply personal poetry by the author, David Anthony Sam, written as his mother was dying and in the years after. Here, Sam celebrates his mother’s life and her impact on him, grapples with her dying and his helplessness to ease her from this life, and mourns her by “mothering himself a new life” absent her powerful presence. Words are a gift his mother gave him, given that she loved to read and was an author herself albeit with few publications. So it is appropriate that Sam use those words to honor her as well as convey the journey that (while individual here to the two of them) is nonetheless a universal one.

About the Poet: Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam is the proud grandson of peasant immigrants from Poland and Syria. He lives in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and retired as president of Germanna Community College in 2017. Sam has four previously published collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the Winter 2017 issue of Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 80 journals and publications. Sam’s chapbook Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson was the 2016 Grand Prize winner of GFT Press Chapbook Contest and his collection All Night over Bones received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Homebound Poetry Prize.