“Worldly but never jaded, these poems ‘catalogue the wild hawk-eyed heart’ with a judicious eye, meticulous diction, a taut line, and devastating clarity. Beeson’svoice is as effortless as old money and as keen as a fish knife. Reader, you’ll be guttedin the best possible way.”—Julie Sheehan, author of Bar Book and Orient Point“Witty, droll, smart, emotionally honest, playful, brilliant, Miranda Beeson isa poet’s poet and a reader’s poet. She can be both light-hearted and, upon re-readinga poem, down-beat and existential, as dark as an eclipse of the moon. Sometimesher poems pull you in conspiratorially, like an old best friend; other times, there isa stark beauty, cold and passionate, as Yeats would say, as the dawn.”—M. G. Stephens, author of King Ezra and The Brooklyn Book of the Dead“With an eye ‘brilliant as a black diamond,’ Miranda Beeson seizes momentsof contemporary life and plunges their contradictions into the poems of Wildlife. Kaleidoscopic and zesty Wildlife abounds in Beeson’s piercingly observed inconsistencies, whether the poet encounters a Home Depot or a man without a home. Among Wildlife’s most memorable poems are those about memoryitself, especially the elegies for a brother killed. Sexuality and beauty twist in abiting and poignant helix. It’s a very wild ride in this life, Beeson reminds us.”—Molly Peacock, author of A Friend Sails in on a Poem“While many books open with narratives of fact, Wildlife opens by invitingquestions—what is actual, what dream, what invented? The reader, too, asks the question (from ‘Continuous Present’), What’s next? There is a vigorous restlessnessto Wildlife. The turning of the page is a drama.”—Lynn Emanuel