What I Know [How to Do] by Michael Garrigan

These peaceful and gently beautiful poems are a heady ceramic cup of mint tea handed to you by a loved one, as they wrap themselves around your carriage.

–Nathaniel Riverhorse Nakadate ~ Adventure journalist, waterman, & environmental filmmaker

What I Know [How to Do] is a luminous journey through landscape and memory. Garrigan’s svelte verse, elegant craft, and vivid imagery are constant companions throughout this collection; his epiphanies are rooted in the ephemera of the natural world and the subtleties of human interaction. Intensely personal, yet wildly accessible, What I Know [How to Do] feels both organic and purpose-driven. Few poets can transport and challenge readers the way Garrigan can, and this collection is satisfying on every level.

–Jason Splichal, Founder and Co-Editor of Sky Island Journal.

Michael Garrigan’s What I Know [How to Do] is a series of section hikes during which sage life advice and hot coffee are provided. And as in all worthwhile poetry, the reader has to get a little mud on their boots. My feelings about his collection can be summed up in Garrigan’s own words, “it has a voice and an influence if you let it hold you just for a little.”

–Lannie Stabile, Managing Editor of Barren Magazine

The poems in What I Know [How to Do] serve as an antiquated how-to manual that instructs the reader as the beloved, in both physical and metaphysical quandaries, from a simple and humorous recipe for making pizza to directions for living alone. They ask of us to listen, and pose that if we do, we can change both our outer landscapes (“How to Create a Lake”), and our inner ones (“How to Read”). Yet as simple as a step-by-step protocol might seem, the speaker of these poems understands that even the boundaries between driving down gravel roads and a marriage proposal are never exclusive of one another. These poems are survival manual, love poem, and scripture, all wrapped into one.

–Andrea England, author of Other Geographies