Into Daylight

Winner of the Dorset Prize

“This book gets better each time I read it. Harrison is very skillful in a way that’s almost passed out of existence: only a handful of writers can do what he does in handling the line and understanding how syntax and line work together—employing the plain style with great virtuosity”

—Tom Sleigh, Judge’s Citation

About the Author

Jeffrey Harrison is author of five books of poetry, including The Singing Underneath, chosen by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series in 1987, and Incomplete Knowledge, runner-up for the Poets’ Prize in 2008. A volume of selected poems, The Names of Things, was published in 2006 in the United Kingdom. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, he has published poems in The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Yale Review, and many other magazines and anthologies, and has taught at a number of colleges and universities, and at Phillips Academy, where he was Writer-in-Residence. He lives in Dover, Massachusetts.

Advanced Praise

“Jeffrey Harrison’s new book reveals his deep commitment to the necessity of remembering. Into Daylight becomes a record of intimacy forged and sustained over decades with family, a few friends, and abiding literary influences, as well as the constant presence of nature, to which he returns again and again for restoration, affirmation, and wisdom, sharing these discoveries with his reader who steps with him into the light.” — Jacqueline Kolosov, The Georgia Review

“The book is called Into Daylight, and the title is wonderfully right. Jeffrey Harrison brings what he sees and experiences into the light of what they are: the look of a flower, or a rabbit that John Clare might also have seen, or the subtle blooming of a witch hazel branch, but also a death — the remembrance of a death, the death of a brother — and a childhood game of sliding down a banister telling its delight and foretelling of things to come. There’s darkness in the light of these singularly intelligent and moving poems, written in perfectly managed lines, in a measured verse that never loses its poise. The human being speaking these lines is one whose speech is wonderfully worth knowing, quietly and vividly observant and sympathetic in judgment of things seen in the daylight of their beauty and their vulnerability” —David Ferry, author of Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, winner of the National Book Award

“Naturalness is the quality I most admire in Jeffrey Harrison’s restrained and deeply affecting poetry. It’s a quality achieved through great art, the eliminating of everything superfluous, easy, or artificial. What remains is utterly convincing, flawlessly right.”— Jonathan Galassi

Praise for Jeffrey Harrison’s earlier work:

“It’s thrilling to read an entire book of poems written with such pleasure and gusto… about a range of ordinary things — salt, rowing a boat, discarded books, a stinking pond — and he gets more out of his subjects than seems possible”— Philip Levine

“…seemingly effortless access to both desperate sorrow and a certain joyous and musical gusto—” — Virginia Quarterly Review

“Jeffrey Harrison’s new book reveals his deep commitment to the necessity of remembering. Into Daylight becomes a record of intimacy forged and sustained over decades with family, a few friends, and abiding literary influences, as well as the constant presence of nature, to which he returns again and again for restoration, affirmation, and wisdom, sharing these discoveries with his reader who steps with him into the light.” — Jacqueline Kolosov, The Georgia Review

“One is in and out of the world of commerce between men. Out for a walk or a jaunt with a loyal animal… only to return to work or art. Into Daylight strives for a kind of observance… an observance of a genuine life (‘which if not dazzling is at least genuine’)” — Scott Hightower, Fogged Clarity

“More than anything, Harrison likes to write clearly and directly — or, rather, with apparent clarity and directness. He strips the lyric voice of flourish and ornament and allows it to simply speak, which is not the same thing as speaking simply. This is a book full of quiet triumphs.” — Eric McHenry, Columbia Magazine

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-936797-43-1