Poetry. SCAPE, a poised and attentive debut collection by Joshua Harmon, engages with various landscapes--from the constructed and debased world of parking lots, potato chip factories, and cul-de-sac traceries to the "rural equation" of woods, fields, and "clouds' crumpled page" to create a series of conversations and engagements with the idea of the natural. Through his precise observations, Harmon defines landscape--the word and the idea--through an insightful and meticulous relationship with language. For Harmon, landscape is never static; instead his poems map a constantly changing terrain, in which the interior is imposed on the exterior as a frame for seeing it. "In SCAPE, Joshua Harmon reaches deep into the resources of our rich English, renewing the language and creating from it a physical and emotional world completely his own: his incisive and richly musical stanzas have an ever-returning vigor and freshness"--Lydia Davis.

Author Hometown: Poughkeepsie, NY USA



About the author: Joshua Harmon is the author of QUINNEHTUKQUT, a novel (2007), and SCAPE, a collection of poems (2009). His work has appeared in Antioch Review, Iowa Review, Southern Review, Verse, and other journals, and he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. He was educated at Cornell University and Marlboro College.

Reviews:
http://acompulsivereader.wordpress.com/compulsive-reviews/joshua-harmon-scape/
http://www.spdbooks.org/pages/staff-picks/default.aspx
http://joshuaharmon.blogspot.com/
http://quarterlyconversation.com/scape-by-joshua-harmon-review
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/issue/book-review-of-rising-and-scape-by-farrah-field-and-joshua-harmon