Comments on: jim harrison | five poems

By: whstewart

whstewart — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:55:10 +0000

I have just begun to read Harrison and am bowled over by his narrative imagination, his fresh eye, his agricultural viewpoint, and his pscyhological courage. All of this comes with a certain amount of swagger, admittedly, but then I’m not sure that he could have accessed the rest, particular his imaginative story telling, without the swagger.

I don’t see what the grant money has to do with anything. Some grant money is wasted, some, no doubt, corruptly directed and some, as in Harrison’s case, a great investment. Life is contingent upon many things: ambition and will power, genes, era you live in, diet, parents, dogs you’ve lived with, etc., with grant money fairly far down the list, I’d say.

By: D. Martin Lanzone

D. Martin Lanzone — Sun, 20 May 2012 02:03:54 +0000

As a point of interest JH made some good money, which bought some good land, from writing screen plays. Grants, Guggenheim and otherwise were a short leg up for a short time – not a leg.

By: A.g. Synclair

A.g. Synclair — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:01:03 +0000

He is a remarkable poet. “Broom” is art, pure and simple.

By: Michael Koehler

Michael Koehler — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:45:12 +0000

Harrison is a force of nature, no matter what form of poetry you prefer, his poems bowl you over.

By: Michael Koehler

Michael Koehler — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:41:15 +0000

Norb, thank you so much for sharing this. Harrison has been on my shelf many years. His duo with Ted Kooser, “Braided Creek” always fills me with joy.

By: Jean

Jean — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:10:30 +0000

Some of these ought to be read aloud with Leadbelly wailing gritty songs in the background.

By: Beverly Penn

Beverly Penn — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 02:44:45 +0000

I’ve loved Harrison since the first time I read his work. His voice is unrepeatable; everything is figured through nature, but there is also a hidden strength, perhaps even brutality to it all. Thank you for posting these.

By: Kris

Kris — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:47:57 +0000

Have been reading Harrison’s novels all winter and the poems are a distillation that sometimes recall different scenes in DALVA, THE ROAD HOME, TRUE NORTH. His words send me off on explorations, large, small, within, without. Haven’t read his autobiography, didn’t know about his personal life,and am not attached to who paid, how, or weighing what the price fluctuations might be for a human soul. In DALVA, a Cree Indian asks, “What do stories do when they are not being told?”

By: Ralph Murre

Ralph Murre — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:40:48 +0000

Rob, I have indeed read that memoir, and while what you say is not explicitly wrong, I think it is implicitly full of shit. Harrison writes circles around most anybody out there because he has lived the life, and what’s so much more important for a writer, he has observed and written about the life and lives going on around him. Hemingway wrote about Hemingway. While Harrison indeed owes a great deal to some people connected with academia, he’s sure as hell not their little goodboy, and he bailed out of that life at the first opportunity. I think too, that we might remember that Hemingway did his writing at a time when people actually BOUGHT books, so making a living off of writing then was a little different gig.

By: Robert M. Zoschke

Robert M. Zoschke — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:02:11 +0000

Harrison and his creative work would not exist if not for the Guggenheim Grant World and Harrison’s Academician World fellow Teacher and Administrator friends who have GIVEN him the money he certainly did not earn from the public buying his books. All of those GRANTS have enabled to enable the fable of his Hemingwayesque Being. Anyone unaware of this reality has simply not read Harrison’s memoir, where he admits to all of that, where, in fact, he admits that he was such a hopalong-to-nowheresville that he would have been belly-up without even a teaching gig good enough to provide for his family if an old friend of his suddenly connected to The Guggenheim Foundation didn’t make it a personal mission to get a Grant Application completed for Harrison “in the nick of deadline time” to GIVE Harrison the money his writing was not earning in the marketplace. All of this meaning, he is a far cry in comparison terms to Hemingway, who lived his life on the proceeds of entertaining the multitudes so well that they paid for his writing and paid for his writing and paid for his writing, most gladly.