Identity Theft (Hardcover)

'Joseph Harrison's new volume is a wonderful leap in his poetic development. Harrison fuses formal control with a rich interiority and composes many poems that deserve to become canonical.' - Harold Bloom'The title poem of Joseph Harrison's second book is a witty and headlong discussion of how one's self, if any, is constituted. We are a patchwork, it develops, and the same might be said of Harrison's book, which makes continual and expert use of Spenser, Wordsworth, Horace, Villon, and other predecessors. ... Harrison is a superlative ringmaster: his book throughout is governed by that playfulness and performance which, as Frost said, are required in poetry however impassioned or serious. I found myself particularly moved by Who They Were, which recalls the poet's mother and father in the stanza of Tennyson's In Memoriam.' - Richard Wilbur