“The animals in Mikko Harvey’s poems are the outside ones — the actual walruses, penguins, ladybugs — and the inside ones — the ones that make our hearts beat faster, that hunger, and long, and fear. In his smart-hearted and spirited new collection, Let the World Have You (House of Anansi), Harvey writes poems as stories, as fairy tales, as fabulist moments with reality on slant. In one, no one volunteers to be mayor, so the librarian releases a yellow lizard named Harold, ‘a cousin of consciousness,’ to choose. In another, a bear offers vitamin B and ashwagandha tonics from his case. For their playfulness, their good humor (how difficult it is to pull off funny in a poem, how refreshing when it’s done!), there’s a darkness throbbing at the center of these poems, as there is with fairy tales. Our hidden selves remain largely incomprehensible, and it’s these hidden selves that Harvey re-introduces us to, reminding us of the ones inside ourselves, the ones inside everyone and everything else. The language is forceful in its simplicity — ‘you never / really know / what’s what / when it / comes to / this planet’ — conversational, and wallops with deep, intimate truth: ‘There is a footbridge / in a forest / almost no one / ever crosses. / The human mind is the moss / growing on its stonework. / I wish / I told / you the truth more.’ There’s magic here, a towering and welcoming imagination, the best kind, the kind that takes your hand into strange places, knows that fear makes sense, and helps you see what’s here.” —Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe

“Mikko Harvey’s Let the World Have You is a catalog of (im)possibility that makes the dead world new again, its poems like alarm clocks tuned to the funk and pluck of our most awake days. Offering a language for our shared bewilderment in this life, this is a vulnerable work, equally brutal and gentle as it keeps turning toward the most remarkable things. I felt humbled by this book and its insistence that the world continues to unfold before us with endless surprises, including that of its own generous care.” —Julie Choffel, Orion Magazine

“Mikko Harvey’s second book of poems, Let the World Have You, is a dive into a strange and surreal world. Like his debut collection, Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit, Harvey’s newest work is full of animals and other creatures interacting with the daily occurrences of our lives… The bizarreness of the poems’ premises meets a yearning and desire for intimate human connection. This connection is ‘a fine / feeling being / at ease together never / having known each / other’s fur.’ Harvey scrutinizes the most minute, putting a microscope on ‘not god exactly, but at least something / inexplicable. Something strange and worth / briefly turning your face toward.’”
—Manahil Bandukwala, Carousel Magazine

“The subjects of grief and anxiety in this book mask one another—anxieties about intimacy are translated into episodes of ecocentrism that refuse to ignore human interaction, while grief for the natural world is rendered with the kind of closeness and tenderness found in a love poem… Harvey is unwilling to completely turn away from grief and anxiety—implying that the salve to it all is being present, open, and vulnerable—and cleverly uses one anxiety as a disguise for another, shapeshifting them interchangeably so as to neither confront the pain directly nor neglect it entirely; as if posturing comfort with one resolves the discomfort of the other. It is in this way that Harvey settles on tenderness and humor as a way to comfortably exist in these tableaus of uncertainty. Harvey’s sense of humor and the absurd play out in the small scale—feeling like skits, dioramas, or whispered asides. There are talking bears selling medicine to joggers, a microscopic species of human found living in the frontal lobe of a woman’s brain, a lizard whose job it is to elect a town’s mayor, and a Notley-esque owl who lives in the mouth of a doctor… The presence of tenderness is rich in this collection, particularly in the hushed voice of the speaker, which draws the reader in close to hear, whispering an exacting quietude over the book—one that casts a soft and knowing light on the scenarios.” —Kylie Gellatly, Gulf Coast

“Harvey’s poems’ light weight lets them move quickly, like a fox. He toggles among received text, advice, narrative, almost confessional lyric poetry, and wildly otherworldly stuff... suggesting that accepting the oddnesses of the everyday, including ourselves, might be the truly surreal act. The speaker is himself surreal, he perceives things surreally. Maybe we’re all surreal, and whatever it is we call surrealism is just a way of remaining attuned to this daily dysphoria.” —Carl Watts, Arc Poetry

“Mikko Harvey’s second collection spills over with unexpected precisions of perception and saying. Sometimes aphoristic, sometimes surreal, sometimes Chekhovian, these pages have kept surprising me. Oddity and depth of feeling marry, equal partners in a sui generis voice. The sentences’ knifework slips between the ribs so deftly that the reader almost doesn’t notice—until they do.” —Jane Hirshfield

“Harvey’s second book reveals curious new dimensions, alternating between quick-glimpse poems and longer ones that gently release their surprises. I’m fascinated by how the poems reshape in their rhetoric (‘I’m trapped inside / a script I wrote / for myself’) and through their resonant encounters and reassurances. Some operate a bit like palindromes, hourglasses, accordions—all with a light touch. Harvey’s wondrous poems dwell in impermanence and intimacy, unveiling the mysteries among us, within us, and between us.” —Shelley Wong

“Who is immune to the charm of this very human voice speaking to us, telling us it is all okay, you did nothing wrong, and even if you did, not to worry, there’s a continual loop to all occurrence, and things will come round again, even if they are out of our control?” —Mary Ruefle

“Mikko Harvey is a poet with a quirky sensibility. To me, his casual, melancholic, funny poems are like sugar water for the hummingbird.” —Henri Cole

“Dazzling, heartfelt poems populated by inventive narrative and uncanny imagery. Let the World Have You is a treasure trove of playfully serious odes to being.”
—Mark Leidner


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