Harm: Poems

Memory’s deposit is my only asset now, says the narrator of Miles Wilson’s wrenching poetry collection. These are fiercely honest poems about how a man’s life can meander through pain and indiscretion, anger and bitterness; how it can express itself in rage and pungent wit and find a kind of healing in the natural world of mountains and trout streams. Wilson’s meditations range from the virile perils of a fire-fighter’s life in the forests of the West to the domestic agonies of a marriage gone wrong; to the resonances between wild nature and the flawed, searching human spirit and the wisdom to be found in the restorative powers of ravaged forests and in the promises that life imposes on us. His language is powerful, his images rich and varied, and the layered connections between personal experience and moral complexity completely engaging. And, in the end, the poet reminds us, What can we know? Only what the world exacts and our countersong, the keeping.