Let the World Have You

by Mikko Harvey

Overview

The new collection from RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award winner Mikko Harvey.

 Mikko Harvey’s new collection invites readers into a world that is and is not the world we know. In poems at once surreal, satiric, and tender, we encounter a cast of surprising non-human characters — the bear who sells herbal remedies, the politically influential lizard, the mean butterfly — yet at the core of this book is Harvey’s impulse to confront the challenges of human intimacy. Let the World Have You is a vibrant report on the ways in which we are delightfully, awkwardly, heartbreakingly entangled: with each other, with the environment we inhabit, and with the psychological environments that inhabit us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487010690
Publisher:	House of Anansi Press
Publication date:	04/05/2022
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

MIKKO HARVEY is the author of Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit (House of Anansi, 2018), which was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His poems appear in such places as Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Maisonneuve, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019. A graduate of Vassar College and Ohio State University, he has received the 2017 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award and the 2019 Salt Hill Philip Booth Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. He works as a writer for an immigration law firm and currently lives in upstate New York.

Table of Contents

Spring 1

Wind-Related Ripple in the Wheatfield 2

Microsleep 4

Travelling Pharmacy 5

For M 7

Funny Business 10

Unearthing 11

The Process Refused to Cease or Perfect Itself 13

The Intelligent Animal 14

Wet Fur 15

How Fresh? 16

Possible Cure 17

Some Scheduled Relaxation 20

The Frontierswomen 21

Declaration 24

Mean Butterfly 25

Autumn 26

Field Trip 28

Making a Quiche with You 30

Fly Flying into a Mirror 31

Work Life 33

Personhood 35

The Mouth of the Doctor 37

A Meeting of Loyalists 42

Secret Channel 43

Sugar Water 45

Department of the Interior 47

The Best Bread in the World 48

Personality 50

An Ordinary Weakness 51

The Poem Grace Interrupted 53

Hello Interpreter 55

Waterer 57

Small Grey Stone 59

People Need Mountains 60

Spark 61

Operator 63

Liability 64

Immunity 66

Let the World Have You 68

Editorial Reviews

"There’s magic here, a towering and welcoming imagination, the best kind, the kind that takes your hand into strange places, knows that fear makes sense, and helps you see what’s here." — The Boston Globe

"Mikko Harvey’s Let the World Have You is a catalog of (im)possibility that makes the dead world new again … Offering a language for our shared bewilderment in this life, this is a vulnerable work, equally brutal and gentle as it keeps turning toward the most remarkable things." — Orion Magazine

"Strange and sly, the poems in Mikko Harvey’s collection Let the World Have You are mocking, hopeful, and entertaining … Moving from the absurd image to the sharp and piercing comment, Harvey’s poems are always a pleasure here." — The Miramichi Reader

"Dazzling, heartfelt poems populated by inventive narrative and uncanny imagery. Let the World Have You is a treasure trove of playfully serious odes to being." — Mark Leidner, author of Returning the Sword to the Stone

"Mikko Harvey is a poet with a quirky sensibility. To me, his casual, melancholic, funny poems are like sugar water for the hummingbird." — Henri Cole, author of Blizzard

From the Publisher

Mikko Harvey’s Let the World Have You is a catalog of (im)possibility that makes the dead world new again … Offering a language for our shared bewilderment in this life, this is a vulnerable work, equally brutal and gentle as it keeps turning toward the most remarkable things.

Orion Magazine

Strange and sly, the poems in Mikko Harvey’s collection Let the World Have You are mocking, hopeful, and entertaining … Moving from the absurd image to the sharp and piercing comment, Harvey’s poems are always a pleasure here.

The Miramichi Reader

Mikko Harvey is a poet with a quirky sensibility. To me, his casual, melancholic, funny poems are like sugar water for the hummingbird.

Henri Cole

There’s magic here, a towering and welcoming imagination, the best kind, the kind that takes your hand into strange places, knows that fear makes sense, and helps you see what’s here.

The Boston Globe

Dazzling, heartfelt poems populated by inventive narrative and uncanny imagery. Let the World Have You is a treasure trove of playfully serious odes to being.

Mark Leidner