Wise folks are, right now, teaching courses to intellectually hungry young persons about which emotion has caused more artistic inspiration: grief or joy. But anyone who spends any time with poet Jeffrey Harrison's marvelous "Into Daylight" collection can only emerge knowing grief and joy in new and wondrously intertwined ways.

At the heart of the collection is the suicide of Harrison's brother. Yet, as poems like "Renewal" or "Generations" or "Essay On a Recurring Theme" or "Separation Anxiety" indicate, the realities and machinations of life and family — and art — can be of great comfort and therapy.

See Harrison read Friday in the latest event from the Arts Café Mystic. It takes place in the Mystic Museum of Art. Fine jazz act the Mike Casey Trio performs, and the Arts Café also presents a Melanie Greenhouse play in miniature to open the proceedings.

Arts Café Mystic, 7 p.m. Friday, Mystic Museum of Art, 9 Water St., Mystic; $10, student under 21 free; (860) 912-2444.