Songs of Unreason

Guggenheim winner Harrison's 30-plus books include many novels (e.g., The Farmer's Daughter), and his poetry illustrates how vital narrative is to all his work. These poems offer a unique worldview along with a keen knowledge of nature ("of late, I/ see waking as another chance at spring") and a mastery of aphorisms ("The beauty of the rattlesnake is in its threat"). Unlike many contemporary poets, Harrison is philosophical, but his philosophy is nature based and idiosyncratic: "Much that you see/ isn't with your eyes./ Throughout the body are eyes." The last section, "Suite of Unreason," provides a provocative 20-page series of vignettes about life, death, childhood, and travel that closely examine our relationships with other beings. The poems occasionally fall short in their needless repetition and reliance on full sentences when phrases would jump-start tension and create more music ("He thinks/ he's as inevitable as a river but doesn't have time/ to keep time"), but Harrison clearly has a probing and unrelenting eye.