TAPS: A Decade of Verse from Chelsea’s Joseph Harms

Chelsea poet Joseph Harms releases TAPS, a decade-long collection of five poetry books. Explore his lyrical intensity, fictional narratives, and poetic reflections on mortality.

On May 21, 2025, Todos Contentos & Yo También Press published TAPS, a new volume from Chelsea poet Joseph Harms. The book gathers five complete poetry collections—Bel, Nous, Goety, Youel, and Funest—and represents nearly a decade of work by a writer known for his lyrical intensity, sonic inventiveness, and unflinching approach to the human condition.

“These are five poetry collections, discrete, complete,” describes Harms of the book’s scope. The journey begins with Bel, a sonnet series that unfolds like a tragic novel, following two characters, Bel and Az, whose love is derailed by addiction and dysfunctional family dynamics. “It’s kind of like a Romeo and Juliet unrequited love thing that gets interrupted just by, you know, kind of crummy parents, alcohol, drugs,” he says.

The subsequent collections deepen and expand the narrative arc. Nous revisits Bel with looser forms and fragmented memory. Goety tells the story of a couple bound in mutual destruction. The later collections, Youel and Funest, mark a turn toward more esoteric and philosophical territory. Throughout, Harms maintains that his poetry, though fictionally framed, is emotionally sincere. “Of course, it’s all really close to my life, but it’s fiction.”

The title TAPS carries multiple meanings, most recognizably the bugle call played at military funerals. “I used to hear it all the time on Lake Michigan at sunset,” Harms recalls. “Even as a little kid, not understanding what the song was for, I found it moving, like an underlying theme of all five collections in TAPS, like coming to grips with mortality.”

The editorial process was both rewarding and painful. “It was really hard to edit the first two collections, just because I wrote them so long ago,” Harms says, describing how Bel and Nous required significant revision to integrate into the larger structure of TAPS. “I thought I had done a really good job the first time around, but you never stop editing.”

So, how does Harms describe his poetry to someone unfamiliar with the form, someone who thinks of poetry only as rhymes and roses?

“It’s really tough,” he admits. “Each poem really looks deeply into a moment in a way that maybe you can do in a short story or a novel, but there’s so much stuff on either side of that moment that you have to contend with. Poetry just jumps right into the heart of the matter with no explanation whatsoever.”

For Harms, the appeal of poetry lies in its ability to evoke rather than explain. “I often don’t understand exactly what I’m reading,” he says, “but to use silly language, [I read poetry] to get that feeling of the ineffable, what can’t be said.”

TAPS is not a gentle entry into poetry, but it may be a vital one. It challenges readers to sit with discomfort, explore complexity, and emerge changed. For those willing to give poetry a second look, or perhaps a first, Harms offers an unguarded invitation. “If it’s doing a good job, [poetry] throws you in the deep end, kind of time and time again,” he says.

For those who have never explored poetry, or have written it off as abstract or inaccessible, Harms’ TAPS might be worth a try. Not because it offers easy answers, but because it aims straight for the heart of what can’t be easily said.

TAPS is available to order at TodosContentosPress.Com/TAPS , Seredipity Books in Chelsea, and select bookstores in Southeast Michigan and NYC.

Photos courtesy of Joseph Harms