John Harn knows how to listen to the particular, how to make it holy in its transience. His language is precise and surreal, yet always lyrical, always intimate. His Galveston is both a real place and a stop along a pilgrimage. I find myself going back to these poems again and again; each small stanza like a separate kōan. When he says, in
Over on the Mainland, "I'm doing god's work / merging English words with a light rain's patter," he could be describing the whole collection.
Jeanne Wagner, author of The Zen Piano-moverand In the body of Our Lives
John Harn's Witness brims with questions that aren't concerned with answers but testify to the mystery of not knowing. With tight stanzas and succinct ruminations, Harn attests to the brevity of life and the oceans of memory and inquiry we pour into the tiny chalice of our years on earth. He knows all testimonies will be lost, including his own, and the pages of Witness are filled so gorgeously with this truth.
Ciona Rouse, author of Vanta Black
With this new collection, Harn seeks a movement of consciousness. Images move across a multi-dimensional dance floor, gliding from one perspective to another. Boundaries disappear. Harn's poems may be distractions, as he claims, but they are hardly disposable. They ask us to re-imagine everything.
Brad Maxfield author of For All We Know
John Harn's Witness is a book of blessings and rich moments of inspired attention. This gifted poet trusts the reader to follow him in these supple poems with their acute sense and welcoming evocations of place. Witness is marked throughout by patience, grace and compassion, alive with sustained wonder.
Lee Upton, author of Undid in the Land of Undoneand Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles
