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Jim Harrison: Early Poems

Jim Harrison: Early Poems

by Jim Harrison

Introduction by Colum McCann

Published by: Copper Canyon Press

Imprint: Copper Canyon Press

344 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

Paperback
9781556596803
Published: August 2023

$25.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Throughout the pages of Jim Harrison: Early Poems, a young, ambitious poet engaged with a wide range of subjects, styles and forms, sounding for voice and vision in lyrics, prose poems, long suites, and propulsive ghazals.

Jim Harrison called poetry “the true bones of my life.” Jim Harrison: Early Poems contains every poem that appeared in his first five books of poetry, all published before his breakthrough novella trilogy, Legends of the Fall.

As Colum McCann writes in his generous introduction, “Jim Harrison: Early Poems showcases the poems of the early years. Harrison gets us—his readers—to have a hard look at ourselves primarily because he opens up his internal tuning fork to all sorts of sounds and ideas. There is enormous bravery here.”

Throughout these pages a young, ambitious poet engages with a wide range of subjects, styles and forms, sounding for his voice and vision in lyrics, prose poems, long suites, and propulsive ghazals. Regarding the poetry written during this period, Publishers Weekly called Harrison, “an untrammeled renegade genius,” noting that he was “a poet talking to you instead of around himself, while doing absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language.”

Editor's Note

Introduction by Colum McCann

PLAIN SONG

Poem

Sketch for a Job-Application Blank

David

Exercise

A Sequence Of Women

Northern Michigan

Tree

Returning at Night

Apology

Lost

“She”

“I’ve had enough tonight.”

“Once I stood all night”

Fair/Boy Christian Takes a Break

Morning

Garden

Horse

Kinship

February Suite

Traverse City Zoo

Reverie

Fox Farm

“The painting on the wall”

Ticket

Nightmare

Credo, After E.P.

Dusk

Lisle’s River

Three Night Songs

Cardinal

Bellevue

“This is cold salt”

John Severin Walgren, 1874–1962

New Liturgy

Malediction

WorD Drunk

Young Bull

Park at Night

“Not casida, canzone—”

Going Back

Hitchhiking

Sound

Dead Deer

Li Ho

Complaint

Return

LOCATIONS

Walking

Suite to Fathers

Suite to Appleness

The Sign

War Suite

American Girl

Lullaby for a Daughter

Sequence

Cold August

Night in Boston

February Swans

Thin Ice

Natural World

Moving

White

After the Anonymous Swedish

Dawn Whiskey

Breakthrough

Legenda

A Year’s Changes

Locations

OUTLYER & GHAZALS

OUTLYER

In Interims: Outlyer

Trader

Hospital

Cowgirl

Drinking Song

She Again

Awake

GHAZZALS

Notes on the Ghazals

Ghazals: I–LXV

LETTERS TO YESENIN

Letters: 1–30

Postscript

INCIDENTS

A Last Ghazal

A Domestic Poem for Portia

Missy, 1966–1971

Four Matrices

North America Image Cycle

RETURNING TO EARTH

Returning to Earth

SELECTED & NEW POEMS

Not Writing My Name

Frog

Rooster

Epithalamium

A Redolence for Nims

Followers

My First Day as a Painter

Waiting

Noon

Birthday

Clear Water 3

Dōgen’s Dream

Weeping

The Chatham Ghazal

Marriage Ghazal

March Walk

The Woman from Spiritwood

Gathering April

Walter of Battersea

After Reading Takahashi

Index of Titles

Index of First Lines

About the Author

Jim Harrison was the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction--including Legends of the Fall, the acclaimed trilogy of novellas, and The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems. His books have been translated into two dozen languages, and in 2007 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

“I’ve always loved Jim Harrison's poetry—so full of itself, so direct and hungry and angered and awed.”—Joy Williams
“[Harrison] equates writing poetry with creating cave paintings or petroglyphs, so intrinsically human is the urge to express the life of the soul, and his poems do make the temporal timeless.” ―Booklist, starred review

“This is poetry worth loving, hating, and fighting over.” ―New York Times Book Review

“It is hard-boiled poetry, some of the best of its kind, and one is not surprised to know that Harrison has written very tough novels… His poetic vision is at the heart of it all.” ―Harper’s

“An untrammeled renegade genius… Here is a poet talking to you instead of around himself, while doing absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Harrison’s essential honesty is deeply affecting… a moving body of work.” ―Library Journal

“This brilliant poetry from an essential poet… will speak to you on a multitude of levels.” ―Outside Magazine

Jim Harrison: Early Poems

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