Although it may be critically incorrect, it's almost impossible not to read Miranda Pearson's poems in Harbour as autobiographical. The poet's brief bio is revealing and her earlier work covered much of the same emotional territory.

Pervasively melancholic, this third title of Pearson's proves the writer's adage, "write what you know."; She knows mental health (she works in the field professionally), therapy (she throws herself on the couch), failed romance (again) and the slightest, wispiest hope of becoming contented, at last ("the trick is not to want more";).
The first section called 'Touched' is set in the historic past of a Victorian asylum for "lunatics."; It then moves in the same building to the present but with cures that are not more effective. The "I"; of the poems shifts; a patient speaking about the doctors, doctors' notes about patients, a caregiver and the cared for.

The use of historical records about the insane and their treatment makes painful reading as in: her illness was caused by over lactation, electric shock treatment must be right because the Dr says it is. The nurses, drinking, are boisterous/depressed after a shift. The patients sit, "curled like commas/ serious porcelain profiles.";

As in her previous book, The Aviary, Pearson recounts the old hurts of love gone bad, love as "recycled cruelty."; Here, in the second section, the plaintive longing for "a man charitable and generous"; sometimes seems just petulant. Her wishes it seems are never granted.

Attempts at hedonism turn out not to be "the secret solution."; Why, she asks herself, does she not take the flying leap into hopefulness? The reader also asks, and then remembers, how impossible the leap can be. Perhaps this poet is carrying the melancholy that many of us cannot admit in ourselves.

When the poet is in England, she wants to be in Canada, and vice versa. The man she loved, she's glad to be rid of. The poems are set in at least twenty different locales (Vegas, Toronto, Kent) and they have much the same restlessness. Motherhood is a field of conflicts; it's both expansive and limiting. Some of the loving is fierce, other times it's passive.

These poems are sad but not vengeful. There is no blaming but they are also completely devoid of mirth.

Unmitigated dismal inner-scapes, so why read them? Well, think of the huge popularity of the HBO Series In Treatment. These personal self-revelations from Pearson fascinate for several reasons. For one, we've all been there at some point. It's a relief to find a piece of yourself on a page. The reader closes the book with a sigh, "This is also who I am.";

As well, these poems are so well-written. If the writing was dismal, the whole would droop. To write well about melancholy, the lines must shine, and they do. "Critical and irritated, you don't know why / It's turned out this way.";

Only the last of more than one hundred poems has a faintly optimistic tone. In "Liminal"; there will be a new city to explore, and a new love. The reader wants to cheer but can't. In an aircraft looking down on the "earth a glimpsed atlas,"; the relationship ahead may turn out to be an "old song on the new iPod.";

Pearson's disappointment engages; this is a strong and honest book about self-confessed disscontent. 978-0-88982-261-0

[BCBW 2009]