POETRY

MODERN OCEAN by James Harms (Carnegie Mellon University press: $9.95; 77 pp.) James Harms is originally from Los Angeles, and many of the poems in his first collection are about the Southland. Harms establishes himself as a connoisseur of the quirky: “Funny how the kid you always punched/ remembers you fondly.” Writing about memories and places and relationships, he has a youthful resilience: “I haven’t learned yet to pass my hands/ through the ghosts people leave behind.” It’s as though a friend were telling you about a failed relationship, and you knew--not from what he said, but from how he said it--that he was going to be all right.