Feeding the Fire: Poems

by Jeffrey Harrison

Book Overview

Feeding the Fire retains the virtue of Jeffrey Harrison's earlier work--accessibility and clarity, without sacrifice of complexity--while branching into new territory. There are love poems, lyrics entwined in metaphor, and a number of elegies for the "unfamous," those indelible characters met in any life who shape individual consciousness. Most significantly there are poems of recollection, in which the charged moments of youth, dimly understood at the time of occurrence, return to the poet in flashes of brilliant clarity and passages of intense reminiscence. These new poems affirm the restorative mystery of our own innocence and articulate our complex, stumbling passage toward experience.

"Harrison's language is exact, sinuous, and compelling, and leads to places we may not have seen before, but know when we arrive. This is a beautiful book."--Henry Taylor

"This is a book that can be read from start to finish with ever-heightened expectations that are never disappointed, and with sustained delight."--Anthony Hecht

"Here are hauntingly composed poems of remembrance, of happiness and eagerness and regret--of life lyrically embraced, all beautifully rendered by one of our finest poets."--Robert Coles

Jeffrey Harrison is the author of two previous books of poetry, The Singing Underneath, selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series, and Signs of Arrival. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Pushcart Prize, the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. He currently lives in Andover, Massachusetts.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1889330647
• ISBN13: 9781889330648
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Length: 75 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A thoughtful and moving volume of poems

The poems in "Feeding the Fire," by Jeffrey Harrison, are written in a clear, straightforward language. There are a number of story poems told by a first-person voice; there are also a number of elegies and also poems on poetry itself. Some of the most memorable selections in the book are as follows:"Our Other Sister": a story poem in which a boy's creation of an imaginary sister impacts his real sister. "My Double Nonconversion": an ironic poem about a college freshman's encounters with evangelists from two very different religions. "Salt": about a Gentile man's experience of the Jewish world. "Vietnam Scrapbook": about a 4th grade teacher in 1968 who is teaching her students about the war in Vietnam. "White Spaces": a meditation on poetry and loss, told in 2 voices. "Note Written on Birch Bark": a nature poem that hints at the possibility of liberation from language. "A Garbage Can Full of Books in Brooklyn": a poem that questions how you "read the bibliography of someone's inner life." And finally "Interval," in which fireflies are described as "a sublunar starscape whose shifting constellations / were a small gift of unexpected astonishment."Harrison is a gifted poet-storyteller, and this volume contains some really striking and thoughtful passages.

Another wonderful collection by Jeffrey Harrison

I have not yet had the opportunity to read Mr. Harrison's first book (The Singing Underneath), but I hope to at some point in the near future. As for Feeding the Fire, like his second book (Signs of Arrival) it is a fine collection of poems drawn from poignant memories and touching observations with exquisitely placed dashes of wit. Harrison has the keen ability to synthesize experiences and feelings into a coherent fabric of verse that is easily read. The book was also beautifully produced (particularly the hardback) by Sarabande Books.

A Wonderful Collection: Harrison's Third Book

I have not yet had the opportunity to read Mr. Harrison's first book (The Singing Underneath), but I hope to at some point in the near future. As for Feeding the Fire, like his second book (Signs of Arrival) it is fine collection of poems drawing from poignant memories and touching observations with exquisitely placed dashes of wit. Harrison has the keen ability to synthesize experiences and feelings into a coherent fabric of verse that is easily read. The book was also beautifully produced (particularly the hardback) by Sarabande Books.