Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems

Jim Harrison, Joseph Bednarik, ed.

Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems is distilled from fourteen volumes—from visionary lyrics and meditative suites to shape-shifting ghazals and prose-poem letters. Teeming throughout these pages are Harrison’s legendary passions and appetites, his meditations, rages, and love-songs to the natural world.  The New York Times concluded a review from early in Harrison’s career with a provocative quote: “This is poetry worth loving, hating, and fighting over, a subjective mirror of our American days and needs.” That sentiment still holds true, as Jim Harrison’s essential poems continue to call for our fiercest attention.
 
Also included are full-color images of poem drafts—both typescripts and holographs—as well as the letter Denise Levertov sent to publisher W.W. Norton in the early 1960s, advocating for Harrison’s debut collection.

Paperback: $18.00 list price

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ISBN: 9781556595288

Format: Paperback

Broom

To remember that you’re alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you’ve made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalian
odor that you are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone’s inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard as it must.
Now go home without looking back
at the fading cemetery, enough is enough,
but stop on the way to buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out the window and then begin sweeping.
Sweep until you’ve swept the walls
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
the floor until it disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, go back to the cemetery
in the dark and weave through the stones
a slow dance of your name visible only to birds.

About the Author

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) was the author of over three dozen books, including Legends of the Fall and Dalva, and served as the food columnist for the magazines Brick and Esquire. He published fourteen volumes of poetry, the final being Dead Man’s Float (2016). His work has been translated into two dozen languages and produced as four feature-length films. As a young poet he co-edited Sumac magazine with fellow poet Dan Gerber, and earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the …

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About the Editor

Joseph Bednarik is the co-publisher of Copper Canyon Press. He served as Jim Harrison’s poetry editor since the late 1990s, and is also the co-editor of One-Man Boat: The George Hitchcock Reader (Story Line Press) and The Sumac Reader (Michigan State University Press).

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Reviews

“His resonant, necessary poems are even hungrier, and more demanding of proof that living matters. These poems bear-crawl gorgeously after a genuine connection to being, thrashing in giant leaps through the underbrush to find consolation, purpose, and redemption. In his raw, original keening he ambushes moments of unimaginable beauty, one after another, line after line. Harrison digs in the dirt and finds the stars.” —Dean Kuipers, Literary Hub

“Readers will be compelled to read all his poems after reading these. They will long for more.” —New York Journal of Books

“Reading this essential volume, one might image that the gods are, indeed, staying up late, reading lights on, turning the pages.” —Booklist, starred review

“[Harrison] may no longer be with us, but this book grabs you by the collar and tells you in eleven hundred ways to wake up.” —John Freeman, Literary Hub

“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

“The Essential Poems provides a good introduction―or reintroduction―to the work of this singular writer… these pieces illustrate Harrison’s range and his ease with various formats, from lyric poems to meditative suites to prose poems. They also spotlight his deep, rugged kinship with rural landscapes and the natural world, where ‘the cost of flight is landing.’” ―Washington Post

“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