The Honey of Earth

How can I—or anyone—not adore David Graham’s new collection? The tone throughout is hospitable, wry, and affirming even while acknowledging that loss and suffering are ever present. The honey of earth “comes and goes at once,” Wallace Stevens wrote, and these poems embody that paradox in vivid detail and compelling language. The sweetness that life offers—love, art, music, family, nature—exists simultaneously with the bitterness it guarantees—pain, grief, death. Both coming and going, The Honey of Earth deftly weaves “darkness and light together” with great wisdom, humor, and compassion.   —Eric Nelson