BOOKS
347
Jeffrey Harrison's second collection of poetry,
Signs ofArrival,
surpass–
es the promise of his graceful, quiet, and understated first collection,
The
Singing Underneath,
which the late James Merrill selected as a winner of the
National Poetry Series. In Harrison's work, the commonplace, the inci–
dental, the exotic, and the miraculous all present themselves as the occasion
for tranquil reflection, unflinching meditation, and the knotting of lyric
intensity.
Many younger poets have been named the heir apparent to Elizabeth
Bishop, but of all the younger poets I know, Harrison's work shares not
only the subtle yet virtuoso musical gifts of Bishop's work, but a kinship
of obsessions as well. What and where is the locality one can call
home?
How can one comprehend the exotic except in terms of the domestic and
the domestic except in terms of the exotic?
The evidence of Harrison's poems suggests a stable and rich commu–
nity of family. Instead of the sense one has in Bishop's work of dislocation,
what one detects in Harrison is a restlessness as he moves from the domes–
tic to the foreign, only to return again to the familiar and the familial. The
book is structured to reflect this movement as well. The opening section
is anchored in the home of his childhood. The middle section takes off to
Turkey, Burma, Nepal, India, and elsewhere, and the third section con–
cludes with home and the birth of his own children.
As with Bishop's work, Harrison's invites us with exacting clarity, and
with a sense of good humor and awe in the face of the ordinary
and
the
sublime, as in this passage from "Mayflies":
Every day for a week we watch them
appearing, as if out of nowhere,
on the lake's surface, each one
having risen as a nymph from the bottom
and hatched into a creature lovely enough
to make us stop rowing for a moment,
our raised oars dripping quietly.
Something about the graceful curve
of its abdomen, and its tail
of two fine filaments, like paintbrushes
for depicting the minutest details.
Something about its plight,
its lifespan of a single day, the way
it hardly stands a chance.
Borne on that perilous interface, it must
sit there, trembling, exposed from both sides
to annihilation, gather its tiny wits,
