This Here Paradise begins with an epigraph from the work of Welsh poet, Menna Elfyn: "your language a hymn/ lost in the multitude,/ requiem for a world/ that's forgetting how to be". As if in response to this "forgetting," Wharton's poems move from the personal to cross a panorama of hopeful attentiveness. Clear images combine with a distinctive sense of rhythm and music to shape a collection both straight-ahead readable and carefully thoughtful, serious and playful. There is a recognition that paradise includes both highs and lows. The presumptive duality of these two conditions suggests a tension that resolves through the book's five sections, as Wharton opens a suitcase of birds and watches them soar over a landscape alive with radiant, open waters.

Calvin Wharton is the chair of Creative Writing at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC, and edited Event from 1996–2001. He co-edited the poetry anthology East of Main with Tom Wayman, and has published a chapbook of poems, Visualized Chemistry; the non*#45;fiction Rowing, with Silken Laumann; abnd a collection of short stories, The songs by Hank Williams. Aside from teaching, he has managed a variety of jobs: sand-blaster, gardener, sawmill worker, and ranch hand, among others.

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