08/08/2025
The Origin of Affection by David Sapp
A memoir in poetry and prose
Winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry
In many ways, it makes my heart hurt to read David Sapp’s collection of poetry and prose pieces. The work starts with the prose pieces and the family farm and is so like my early life with my family, a chronicle of grandparents, aunts, and uncles, one Uncle Cal, who sends letters home.
The Farm and its many components from the drop leaf table to the door, to the food are told about in poetry. And the value of work, especially the work of hay, corn, soybeans, and wheat and what it meant to this young man. Sapp’s father-in-law even gets a mention as “a quiet man who never spoke/ of kicking the N***s out of Italy,”
The reader gets to know the family, with all their many quirks, and the poem, "The Wallet” about his grandfather’s billfold brought me to tears. But it’s his mother, the routine description of one woman’s descent into madness, which almost destroys her husband and children’s lives is the basis for the book..
-Roberta George
Founding Editor ~ Snake Nation Press
