Signs of Arrival: Poems

Speaking from the perspective of someone who was one of Mr. Harrison's students at Andover, I have spent a good deal of time reading his work, and have critiqued it frequently. His books, and this book in particular, are incredible, both in their imagery and their personal connection to the reader. I laud both his work as a poet, and I think that through his poetry you get to see what a genuinely incredible individual he is. It is not very often that you read poetry and feel afterward that you like not only like the poetry but the POET. This happens with Mr. Harrison's books.

Signs of Arrival is a luminous book, with poems about fatherhood, travel and nature that are precisely stated. The poems glitter, unpretensiously, but I thought Harrison's more nature-focused The Singing Underneath was better. Signs of Arrival is a more narrative/anecdotal book, and Harrison, it seems to me, excells at the short lyric. There is plenty of that here. Signs is still one of the best books of poetry published in the last five years, but The Singing Underneath is a classic and should be reprinted. It is one of those kinds of books I only knew I'd been looking for once I found it.

This book, Harrison's second, is a luminous and interesting. In his subject matter he identifies greater movements in the world. A teacher at Andover, Harrison was one of James Merrill's favorite poets.