“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’s voice is as effortless as old money and as keen as a fish knife. Reader, you’ll be gutted in the best possible way.” —Julie Sheehan, author of Bar Book and Orient Point “Witty, droll, smart, emotionally honest, playful, brilliant, Miranda Beeson is a poet’s poet and a reader’s poet. She can be both light-hearted and, upon re-reading a poem, down-beat and existential, as dark as an eclipse of the moon. Sometimes her poems pull you in conspiratorially, like an old best friend; other times, there is a 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 moments of 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 memory itself, especially the elegies for a brother killed. Sexuality and beauty twist in a biting 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 inviting questions—what is actual, what dream, what invented? The reader, too, asks the question (from ‘Continuous Present’), What’s next? There is a vigorous restlessness to Wildlife. The turning of the page is a drama.” —Lynn Emanuel Miranda Beeson sinks her observational teeth into the living world-shape-shifting, role-playing, tracking the behavior of creatures-both homo sapiens and other species who inhabit our planet. What is our social contract with one another? With the planet we live on? Who is appropriating who? In Wildlife, beasts of all kinds (radioactive and more) stalk the "civilized" world. "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's voice is as effortless as old money and as keen as a fish knife. Reader, you'll be gutted in the best possible way." ​ -Julie Sheehan, author of Bar Book and Orient Point "Witty, droll, smart, emotionally honest, playful, brilliant, Miranda Beeson is a poet's poet and a reader's poet. She can be both light-hearted and, upon re-reading a poem, down-beat and existential, as dark as an eclipse of the moon. Sometimes her poems pull you in conspiratorially, like an old best friend; other times, there is a 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 moments of 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 memory itself, especially the elegies for a brother killed. Sexuality and beauty twist in a biting 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 inviting questions-what is actual, what dream, what invented? The reader, too, asks the question (from 'Continuous Present'), What's next? There is a vigorous restlessness to Wildlife. The turning of the page is a drama." ​-Lynn Emanuel Miranda Beeson's poems appear all over, including Barrow Street, The Southampton Review, Great Weather For Media, Typishly, & Melville House's Poetry After 9-11: An Anthology of New York Poets. She is the author of the chapbooks Ode to the Unexpected from novelist Peter Cameron's Shrinking Violet Press & The Jones of It, a recent finalist for the Tomaz Salamun Prize. Along the way, she's been the recipient of Palette Poetry's Spotlight Award & a Jody Donohue Poetry Prize. An ardent advocate for Arts in Education, NYSCA has supported her creative writing programs in school systems (K-12). More recently, she has been teaching creative writing & literature at Stony Brook University. She collaborates with artist & designer Nadira Vlaun on limited editions of her prose & poetry-including to date, Salt Meadow & Volatile Activity. She received her MFA from Stony Brook Southampton & lives on the North Fork of Long Island & in New York City.mirandabeeson.com