what the world gives you instead of time by George C. Harvilla

Ray Bradbury’s stories introduced me to Walt Whitman’s poetry. Thanks, Ray!
Mrs. Sawyer (high school English teacher) introduced me to e.e. cummings. Thanks, Mrs. Sawyer!
A college girlfriend introduced me to don marquis (archy and mehitabel). Thank you, Lisa!
These 3 poets have carried me over several decades as I returned often to their works for sustenance, for reassurance, for enlightenment.
And now I also have this slim but ever-so-deep volume of poems from George C. Harvilla to provide the same gifts for the rest of my days. This is my very non-poetic way of saying Thank you! to Mr. Harvilla for these gifts he have given me so that I might invest whatever time I have left…instead of merely spending it.

In ‘what the world gives you instead of time’, George Harvilla’s poems reach the deep collective consciousness many poets struggle to reach in larger volumes of work. These 10 poems present a ‘tasting menu’ of inner discovery (grief, growth, longing, love, and loneliness) with, as he writes in ‘Ironbound’, each poem ‘finding [its] way’.

As he slips from poem to poem, we see the landmarks Harvilla has laid open for viewing, convincing us he has seen ‘the green insides of a hurricane’, reminding us along the way why we read, need and seek out poetry of this unique caliber.

Who writes like this? What even happens within a brain like this poet's? I think there must be a sublime serentity somewhere in there, but I can only imagine the path his thoughts must travel to arrive at that serene place.... but upon arrival he honestly distills some crazy connections into abstract enlightenment.
"Vernal Equinox" brought tears to my eyes.
"even in a small town, death comes" spoke to me in tongues... like a foreign psychic language, but a language that is, as poet George C. Harvilla writes, "an eyeful of broken beaks, monogrammed / spectral".

Writing like his makes me believe in something.

Mr. Harvilla sees deeply into the most quotidian events and finds beauty, pain, nostalgia, joy and sadness in their very ordinariness. The tines of the rake, black thick mud, holes in a crawl space: these are images that most of us ignore or never consider. Mr. Harvilla however, uses them as springboards for the rest of us to jump into new insights . I also found it both amusing and thoughtful that "I am, I confess" from "Vernal Equinox" is on the same page as "Absolution'. Was this "Confession" followed by "Absolution" the sheer randomness of the layout? Given Mr. Harvilla's skill and wit, I would not at all be surprised if it was intentional.
These poems have layers. They require reading several times. But each time affords the reader with new ways of seeing--and hearing--each time leading to a most serendipitous insight.

Mr. Harvilla’s poems gives us a peek at the fluidity of our brains, how they imagine, hope, think, and wish it to be. Nothing is an event, a fact, an object. All is ever-fluid, here and gone, won’t-stop-for-a-minute, never the same again. Sometimes that’s a good thing.

I remember the first time I rode a very big roller coaster by myself at age 10. It was such a “stupendous” (my word) experience that I felt I had to repeat it as many times as possible. My father said I could ride twice more because it was my birthday. Each ride was more exciting, different, and memorable than the one before. My memories of each were different.

I will read these poems many times.