Written between 1980 and 1987, the poems in The Imposition of Ashes are the early efforts of a poet whose subsequent work has received the praise of Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and John Ashbery. The manifold energies of the later work are already on display here-in visionary odes and elegiac pastiches, disquieting lyrics and a splendid, half-mad eclogue. Admirers of Joseph Harrison’s talent and readers of fraught, courageous, arresting poetry will find much delight in this book.