Sleep Not Sleep
by Harvey Ellis
Wow! Lovely. Stark. Rich. Strange. I’d say these poems spy out the mind’s quickest turns and flights and falls. They are comprehensively alert in the present of their making, even as they range widely in subject matter.
– Li-young Lee
Way too many words are used these days which is why it’s a pleasure to find someone who observes the presence of each word in a highly singular fashion. Harvey Ellis is masterful in Sleep Not Sleep to let this kind of singularity fill each word with a greater impact. It truly allows the reader to be involved not as an observer but as an active participant in a highly rapturous moment, a moment of discovering the unknown. Like all reality, this moment is filled with more space than words, more absence than presence, and it is just this absence that Ellis begins to speak with only the slightest of sounds. That’s why, if you’re a good listener, you can’t help but hear your own self coming alive.
– Paul Roth, poet, editor The Bitter Oleander