Recent Mistakes

"These poems are shot through with the yearning and danger of desire. They are 'bruised blue' and elegant. Their precision, Horner's clarity of language, illuminates the feeling of the poems as if words know more than they can." --Patrick Friesen "Desire in RECENT MISTAKES, at once nostalgic and sinister, reveals the impossibility of our holding firm in a world of cunning. Here, dreams explore the incertitude of their own wisdom; letters threaten never to reach their destinations. Libraries that would astonish even someone of Borges' imagination become an uncanny space where lovers find sanctuary, where deceitful meanings seek refuge. Jan Horner's poetry is of exquisite lyric power." -- Smaro Kamboureli "No mistake about it. These poems wail the I/You song from a deep and palpable desire -- an originary hunger in the voice reinstated with an impeccable lyricism." -- Fred Wah Leave your cold dinner write me once more over your table and hold me under our legs entwined like seaweed your mouth on my neck a prodigal desire returning and turning