Harry Guest's poetry delves into the human experience, often with an international perspective shaped by his time teaching in Japan and England. His style is noted for its precision and musicality, exploring themes of memory, place, and the interconnectedness of the world. The poet's outlook offers a keen reflection on everyday life as well as broader existential questions. His work invites readers to consider their own experiences and perceptions of the world.
The sequence of Elegies by Harry Guest, initially published as a chapbook in 1980, showcases poignant reflections on loss and memory. This reissue honors the poems' original format, emphasizing their unique impact and resonance. While included in the author's later collections, presenting them as a standalone chapbook allows for a renewed appreciation of their emotional depth and artistry. This edition reaffirms the enduring relevance of Guest's work, inviting readers to engage with the poems in a more intimate setting.
Last Harvest brings together poems of place, poems on religion, poems on family and friendships, and poems that rebel against the passing of the years. [...] enough however here for mysteries, times to get lost on, found again, a different beauty, wilder, spread, bare and always the past put there in stone to stay "Guest has a way of making so much of what he writes read as though it is a stream of consciousness, fresh and idiosyncratic. He is an observer, a reporter who allows the reader the space to interpret - nothing is crammed down the throat - it can simply be read or, for the more adventurous, delved into to uncover the layers of meaning." --John Mingay, Stride (on Some Times) "The publication of Harry Guest's Collected Poems (A Puzzling Harvest, 2002) was something of a revelation ... [It] revealed that he had gone on developing, experimenting with forms, shunning popularity, performing very little, but continuing to search - in civilised cadences, with wit and genial authority - for a moral and spiritual centre." --John Greening, Times Literary Supplement
