"FIRST WINTER RAIN is a welcome new poetry collection from a master of the tanka form in English. ... Denis Garrison's poetic virtuosity ranges across passionate love lyrics, strongly resonant tanka of place, and elegiac mood pieces. There are lush poems of peace, despairing poems of war; poems of hopefulness, poems of resignation..."-Amelia Fielden, translator and poet, Australia. "What I am struck by is the depth and openness of Garrison's work, and a sincerity that raises his art high above the playing field of today's tanka in English."-Larry Kimmel, editor, Winfred Press. "Wide-ranging in subject matter, restless and probing in their inquiry of the human heart, Denis Garrison's tanka are somewhere near the fulcrum of all his efforts in poetry as editor, poet, and essayist. This generous, good man gifts us all with a lifetime of experience in the highs and lows of a well-traveled soul."-Michael McClintock, President, Tanka Society of America.