I, Menagerie

I, Menagerie, a debut collection of free and formal verse, takes readers on safari through the jungles of family and the Big Top of memory. Across twenty plus poems, author Garrett Ray Harriman releases animals of all stripes into reflections on those chimeras that define our lives: nature, nurture, and the inseverable bonds between them.

“Snake in the Grass,” a semi-finalist in Naugatuck River Review’s 11th Narrative Poetry Contest (guest judged by Lauren K. Alleyne), begins this diverse animal-gamation. The proceeding zoo illuminates the author’s family relationships and the lives and personalities of his parents and siblings. From heartwarming creatures (dogs, lambs, and deer), to those more exotic (elephants and wolverines), to those only seen in imagination (Nessie and Bigfoot), their metaphoric presence preserves his subjects’ inconstant inner-natures. Complementing and corralling this varied circus is an array of formal forms, including the sonnet, rondeau, and pantoum.

Nature herself is also celebrated through the distilled and subtle lines of the endangered Japanese tanka, while her fickleness, beauty, and cunning (ours, too) define the chapbook’s tentpole piece “Vulnerable Species.” The collection ends with a song of praise dedicated to an immortal, ever-evolving fixture at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science: a saber-toothed cat sculpture beloved by generations.

Poignant, surprising, and utterly untamable, I, Menagerie offers poetry readers a unique exploration of all the wilds and comforts a family can provide.