Saving Daylight – $230

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English

Harrison’s poetry is earthy in the fullest sense of the word: it is of the earth, stoked by the senses, in sync with the beat of life, and salty in its forthrightness. Harrison gleans lessons from rivers, the moon, birds, and dogs, and puzzles over the elusive nature of time, tagging clocks as “the machinery of dread.” He writes sharply of war, the “loathsome” government, the distortions of religion, and humankind’s “will toward greed and self-destruction.” A veteran fiction writer, Hollywood darling, hard-living and deep-thinking poet, Harrison brings tough love to the puzzles of existence and a meditative perspective to life’s mysteries as he evokes the wilds of Montana and cherished small towns. He remembers the dead, savors life’s bittersweetness, its push and pull, its “swish and swash,” and knows in his very cells that “salvation isn’t coming. It’s always been here.” Harrison may be under doctor’s orders to count his drinks and measure the sugar in his blood, but this is his most robust, sure-footed, and spirit-raising poetry collection to date. Donna Seaman