Poetry Books

Jim Harrison's first book, only 1500 copies printed. From the Poetry Foundation: "After the publication of his first collection of poetry, Plain Song (1965), he returned to Michigan, where he worked as a freelance journalist and laborer until he began to earn a living from his writing."

To get the intensity of the lyric into poems whose subjects and length tend to resist the lyric mode, Mr. Harrison has moved to longer forms, and particularly to the suite form. In Locations , which represents his work since the publication of Plain Song three years ago, Mr. Harrison employs the suite to attain a diversionary, circling effect, by which he drives many wedges into the total metaphor of the poem. The result is a clustral, rather than geometric or linear, development of the poem—a succession of variations on a single theme which stalk rather than present the poem. Most of the poems in Locations concern themselves with the natural world, although not in the usual manner of the "nature poet." The central figure is human; the poems are immersed in a sense of man violently coexisting with nature and with the physical world he has built for himself. Though many of the poems are personal, they reflect a feeling of a nearly exhausted planet. "My direction," writes Mr. Harrison of this second volume of poems, "seems toward a more open form while attempting to keep the tension of the construct. My sympathies, which are reasonably humble, run hot and cold to the great impurists Whitman, Rilke, Neruda, among others."

Dust jacket design by Paul Baoon. His third book of poems and his scarcest trade title.

“The way Harrison has embedded his entire vision of our predicament implicitly in the particulars of two poetic lives, his own and Yesenin’s, is what makes the poem not only his best but one of the best in the past twenty-five years of American writing.”—Hayden Carruth, Sulfur “Harrison inhabits the problems of our age as if they were beasts into which he had crawled, and Letters to Yesenin is a kind of imaginative taxidermy that refuses to stay in place up on the trophy room wall, but insists on walking into the dining room.”— The American Poetry Review Jim Harrison’s gorgeous, desperate, and harrowing “correspondence” with Sergei Yesenin—a Russian poet who committed suicide after writing his final poem in his own blood—is considered an American masterwork. In the early 1970s, Harrison was living in poverty on a hardscrabble farm, suffering from depression and suicidal tendencies. In response he began to write daily prose-poem letters to Yesenin. Through this one-sided correspondence, Harrison unloads to this unlikely hero, ranting and raving about politics, drinking problems, family concerns, farm life, and a full range of daily occurrences. The rope remains ever present. Yet sometime through these letters there is a significant shift. Rather than feeling inextricably linked to Yesenin’s inevitable path, Harrison becomes furious, arguing about their imagined relationship: “I’m beginning to doubt whether we ever would have been friends.” In the end, Harrison listened to his own poems: “My year-old daughter’s red robe hangs from the doorknob shouting Stop .”

Poetry by noted author Jim Harrison.

A spirited collection of poems inspired by the Zen practice of one of America's most celebrated authors, Jim Harrison, a New York Times best-selling author. The popular novels of Jim Harrison (1937–2016) represent only part of his literary output—he was also widely acclaimed for the “renegade genius” of his powerful, expressive poems. After Ikkyū is the first collection of Harrison’s poetry directly inspired by his many years of Zen practice. The writing here is at once thought-provoking and passionate, immortalizing a celebrated American writer’s relationship to Zen in beautiful verse. These short, spirited poems will inspire you to look at life differently with a newfound sense of wonder and gratitude for everyday moments.

"This is poetry worth loving, hating, and fighting over."― The New York Times Book Review Here is the definitive collection of poetry from one of America’s best-loved writers―now available in paperback. With the publication of this book, eight volumes of poetry were brought back into print, including the early nature-based lyrics of Plain Song , the explosive Outlyer & Ghazals , and the startling "correspondence" with a dead Russian poet in Letters to Yesenin . Also included is an introduction by Harrison, several previously uncollected poems, and "Geo-Bestiary," a 34-part paean to earthly passions. The Shape of the Journey confirms Jim Harrison’s place among the most brilliant and essential poets writing today. "Behind the words one always feels the presence of a passionate, exuberant man who is at the same time possessed of a quick, subtle intelligence and a deeply questioning attitude toward life. Harrison writes so winningly that one is simply content to be in the presence of a writer this vital, this large-spirited."― The New York Times Book Review "(An) untrammelled renegade genius… here’s a poet talking to you instead of around himself, while doing absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language."― Publishers Weekly "Readers can wander the woods of this collection for a lifetime and still be amazed at what they find."― Booklist (starred review.) When the cloth edition of this book was first published, it immediately became one of Copper Canyon Press’s all-time bestsellers. It was featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac , became a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize , and was selected as one of the "Top-Ten Books of 1998" by Booklist . Jim Harrison is the author of dozens of books, including Legends of the Fall and In Search of Small Gods . He has also written numerous screenplays and served as the food columnist for Esquire magazine. He lives in Montana and Arizona. Dead Deer Amid pale green milkweed, wild clover, a rotted deer curled, shaglike, after a winter so cold the trees split open. I think she couldn't keep up with the others (they had no place to go) and her food, frozen grass and twigs,

“I think every person needs to own this book.”—Naomi Shihab Nye Braided Creek contains more than 300 poems exchanged in this longstanding correspondence. Wise, wry, and penetrating, the poems touch upon numerous subjects, from the natural world to the nature of time. Harrison and Kooser decided to remain silent over who wrote which poem, allowing their voices, ideas, and images to swirl and merge into this remarkable suite of lyrics. Each time I go outside the world is different. This has happened all my life. * The moon put her hand over my mouth and told me to shut up and watch. * A nephew rubs the sore feet of his aunt, and the rope that lifts us all toward grace creaks on the pulley. * Under the storyteller’s hat are many heads, all troubled. "These little gems prove that less is often more."— Library Journal "There are poems on the natural world, aging, dying, friendship, love and eros. There is abundant humor... There also is distilled wisdom."— Houston Chronicle "So what we have here is a small book of finely etched verse by two experienced poets. It is something that many readers will want to carry around with them and dip into on occasion. Braided Creek is a vademecum or field guide for the soul."— Bloomsbury Review "Both Harrison and Kooser show a 'coming of wisdom with time.' Kooser has been diagnosed with cancer, which may in part account for the intensity of the language and the sweeping philosophical stance of these quiet poems by two gifted men."— Rocky Mountain News "Here's a book of glorious, intimate tidbits... filled with such small yet expansive moments, perfectly defined."— The Memphis Commercial Appeal "For those who have ears to hear, infinity hums in the taut lines and compact images of this conversation in poetry. Seamless, poignant and profound, Braided Creek is a book worth listening to time and again."— The Wichita Eagle "This book is superb... Simple in its language, spare in its style, Braided Creek presents dozens of short poems that resonate with truth, pain and radiance. Grudgingly acknowledging aging and illness, the verses here also clutch tightly to moments of good cheer, of life lived with spirit and grit and determination."— The Kansas City Star "It's a wonderful, rewarding book."— Philadelphia Inquirer In 2014, the Academy of American Poets asked each of their Chancellors to name an "essential book" and a "beloved book" and Naomi Shihab Nye's beloved book is Braided Creek : "I also recommend Braided Creek because the poems are so tiny and so succulent, each one a transporting hinge for the mind's happiest refreshing moments. I think every person needs to own this book. It easily brings you back to writing when you have felt far away or confused. It clarifies your spirit. Take a quick dip into the mixed back-and-forth voices of these two masters and delight. I have given more copies of this book away as gifts than any other book. And I know for certain that many people have appreciated it greatly. So, why not everyone?" Jim Harrison is one of America’s beloved writers. He is best known for a collection of novellas, Legends of the Fall , and the epic novel Dalva . He lives in western Montana and southern Arizona. Ted Kooser won the Pulitzer prize for his poetry collection Delights and Shadows . He served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate and lives in Nebraska.

Named to the Notable Books of the Year lists from The Kansas City Star and the Michigan Library Association. “Jim Harrison is a writer with immortality in him.”— The Times (London) “This is [Harrison’s] most robust, sure-footed, and blood-raising poetry collection to date.”— Booklist Jim Harrison—one of America’s most beloved writers—calls his poetry “the true bones of my life.” Although he is best known as a fiction writer, it is as a poet that Publishers Weekly famously called him an “untrammeled renegade genius.” Saving Daylight , Harrison’s tenth collection of poetry, is his first book of new poems in a decade. All of Harrison’s abundant passions for life are poured into suites, prose poems, letter-poems, and even lyrics for a mariachi band. The subjects and concerns are wide-ranging—from the heart-rending “Livingston Suite,” where a boy drowns in the local river and the body is discovered by the poet’s wife—to some of the most harrowing political poems of Harrison’s career. There is also a cast of creature characters—bears, dogs, birds, fish—as well as the woodlands, thickets, and occasional cities of Arizona, Montana, Michigan, France, and Mexico. “Imagination is my only possession,” Harrison once said. And Saving Daylight is an imagination in full, exuberant bloom. Jim Harrison is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His work has been translated into dozens of languages. Born and raised in Michigan, he now lives in Montana and Arizona.

"Funny and tender beneath a wry and gruff seen-it-all veneer, Harrison contemplates death, discerns divinity in every stone and leaf, and nobility in ordinary lives, and laughs at our attempts to separate ourselves from the rest of nature."— Booklist "His poems succeed on the basis of an open heart and a still-ravenous appetite for life."— The Texas Observer Now in paperback, Jim Harrison's best-selling poetry book In Search of Small Gods is where birds and humans converse, autobiographies are fluid, and unknown gods flutter just out of sight. In terrains real and imagined—from remote canyons and anonymous thickets in the American West to secret basements in World War II Europe—Harrison calls upon readers to live fully in a world where "Death steals everything except our stories." Maybe the problem is that I got involved with the wrong crowd of gods when I was seven. At first they weren't harmful and only showed themselves as fish, birds, especially herons and loons, turtles, a bobcat and a small bear, but not deer and rabbits who only offered themselves as food. And maybe I spent too much time inside the water of lakes and rivers. Underwater seemed like the safest church I could go to . . . Jim Harrison is one of America's most versatile and celebrated writers. He is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including Legends of the Fall and Dalva . His work has been translated into two dozen languages. He lives in Arizona and Montana.

#1 on the Poetry Foundation Bestseller List; a Michigan Notable Book; a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. "A beautifully mysterious inquiry."— Booklist " Songs of Unreason , Harrison's latest collection of poetry, is a wonderful defense of the possibilities of living."— The Industrial Worker Book Review "As in all good poetry, Harrison's lines linger to be ruminated upon a third or fourth time, with each new reading revealing more substance and raising more questions."— Library Journal Jim Harrison's compelling and provocative Songs of Unreason explores what it means to inhabit the world in atavistic, primitive, and totemistic ways. "This can be disturbing to the learned," Harrison admits. Using interconnected suites, brief lyrics, and rollicking narratives, Harrison's passions and concerns—creeks, thickets, time's effervescence, familiar love—emerge by turns painful and celebratory, localized and exiled. From "Suite to Unreason": Where's my medicine bag? It's either hiddenor doesn't exist. Inside are memories of earth: corn pollen, a bear claw, an umbilical cord. If they exist they help me ride the darkheavens of this life. Such fragile wings. Jim Harrison is the author of thirty books, including Legends of the Fall and River Swimmer , and has served as the food columnist for Esquire . Harrison divides his time between Montana and southern Arizona.

"It's hard to believe that this American master--and I don't use those words lightly--has been hidden right under our noses for decades. But despite his lack of recognition, Mr. Hennen, like any practical word-farmer, has simply gone about his calling with humility and gratitude in a culture whose primary crop has become fame. He just watches, waits and then strikes, delivering heart-buckling lines." --Dana Jennings, The New York Times "As with Ted Kooser, Tom Hennen is a genius of the common touch. . . . They are amazingly modest men who early accepted poetry as a calling in ancient terms and never let up despite being ignored early on. They return to the readers a thousandfold for their attentions."--Jim Harrison, from the introduction "One of the most charming things about Tom Hennen's poems is his strange ability to bring immense amounts of space, often uninhabited space, into his mind and so into the whole poem."--Robert Bly Tom Hennen gives voice to the prairie and to rural communities, celebrating--with sadness, praise, and astute observations--the land, weather, and inhabitants. In short lyrics and prose poems, he reveals the detailed strangeness of ordinary things. This volume is Hennen's long-overdue introduction to a national audience. "In Falling Snow at a Farm Auction" Straight pine chair Comfortable In anyone's company, Older than grandmother It enters the present Its arms wide open Wanting to hold another young wife. Tom Hennen , author of six books of poetry, was born and raised in rural Minnesota. After abandoning college, he married and began work as a letterpress and offset printer. He helped found the Minnesota Writer's Publishing House, then worked for the Department of Natural Resources wildlife section, and later at the Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota. Now retired, he lives in Minnesota.

Jim Harrison's final book of poems, published only a few months before his death “[Jim Harrison] is still close to the source Dead Man's Float is, as its title would suggest, a flinty and psalmist look at mortality and wonder.”— Los Angeles Times ”Mr. Harrison’s novels and poems over the last two decades have been increasingly preoccupied with mortality, never so much as in Dead Man’s Float, his very good new book of verse. Here he details the shocks of shingles and back surgery, as well as the comprehensive low wheeze of a fraying body… The joys in Mr. Harrison’s world have remained consistent. If sex is less frequently an option, his appetites for food and the outdoors are undiminished. In one poem, he goes out into a rainstorm at night and sits naked at a picnic table. In another, he writes: 'I envied the dog lying in the yard/so I did it.'… The title of this volume, Dead Man’s Float, refers to a way to stay alive in the water when one has grown tired while far from shore. As a poet, however, Mr. Harrison is not passively drifting. He remains committed to language, and to what pleasures he can catch.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Few enough are the books I decide to keep beyond a culling or two. Barring fire or flood, Dead Man's Float will be in my library for the rest of my life. If it's the last poetry collection we get from Harrison—and I hope it isn't—it is as fine an example of his efforts as any."— Missoula Independent "Harrison's poems succeed on the basis of an open heart and a still-ravenous appetite for life."— The Texas Observer "Forthright and unaffected, even brash, Harrison always scoops us straight into the world whether writing fiction or nonfiction [and] goes in deep, acknowledging our frailness even as he seamlessly connects with a world that moves from water to air to the sky beyond."— Library Journal “Harrison pours himself into everything he writes… in poems, you do meet Harrison head-on. As he navigates his seventies, he continues to marvel with succinct awe and earthy lyricism over the wonders of birds, dogs, and stars as he pays haunting homage to his dead and contends with age’s assaults. The sagely mischievous poet of the North Woods and the Arizona desert laughs at himself as he tries to relax by imagining that he’s doing the dead man’s float only to sink into troubling memories…Bracingly candid, gracefully elegiac, tough, and passionate, Harrison travels the deep river of the spirit, from the wailing precincts of a hospital to a “green glade of soft marsh grass near a pool in a creek” to the moon-bright sea.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist “Jim Harrison has been a remarkably productive writer across a multitude of genres… His poetry is earthy, witty, keenly observed and tied closely to the natural world [and] mortality looms large in Dead Man’s Float, his 14th collection of poems… [F]orceful, lucid, fearlessly honest, Harrison knows that the nearness of death intensifies life.”—Arlice Davenport, Wichita Daily Eagle Warbler This year we have two gorgeous yellow warblers nesting in the honeysuckle bush. The other day I stuck my head in the bush. The nestlings weigh one twentieth of an ounce, about the size of a honeybee. We stared at each other, startled by our existence. In a month or so, when they reach the size of bumblebees they'll fly to Costa Rica without a map. Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was one of America's most versatile and celebrated writers.

"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 Starred Review in Booklist : “[C]hoices of poems from each of Harrison’s books are passionate and sharp… Of special note is a section from Letters to Yesenin , a book-length poem, and the title poem from The Theory and Practice of Rivers , which contains these echoing lines, 'I forgot where I heard that poems / are designed to waken sleeping gods.' Reading this essential volume, one might imagine that the gods are, indeed, staying up late, reading lights on, turning the pages.” 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. In his essay "Poetry as Survival," Jim Harrison wrote, "Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak." The Essential Poems is proof positive that Jim Harrison taught his soul to speak. "In this unforgiving literary moment, we must deal honestly with [Harrison's] life and work, as they are inextricable in a way that is not true of other poets...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... The Essential Poems demonstrates perfectly why we should turn to Harrison again. He lived and breathed an American confrontation with the physical earth, married himself to a universe of bodies and stumps and birds, did not try to shuck his grotesque masculinity and stared hard with his one good eye (the left was blinded when he was seven) at the inescapable, beckoning finger of death." ―Dean Kuipers, LitHub “ 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.’” ― The Washington Post "Jim Harrison's latest collection, The Essential Poems , contains...engaging and enlightening poems [that] should be taught, learned, and loved. Remember this."― New York Journal of Books "Had he been a chef, all the other foodies would have talked about how Jim Harrison dealt with big flavors. In his poems, they’re all there ― love and death, remorse and longing, the rocket contrails of living. There’s not a lot of small talk in The Essential Poems ... this book grabs you by the collar and tells you in eleven hundred ways to wake up."―John Freeman, Executive Editor, "Recommended Reading from Lit Hub Staff" "Jim Harrison had an appetite. He devoured the natural world with gusto and wrote about it with wild energy and sweetly caustic wit...Harrison was also a prodigious poet, and this thoughtfully curated collection [ The Essential Poems ] showcases him at his best. Like his fiction, the poems observe the collision between civilization and the wildness outside our cities; they act like geocaches both harrowing and beautiful... Organized chronologically, the material here becomes a time line distilling Harrison's signature concerns."― Alta "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 The Heart's Work: Jim Harrison's Poetic Legacy : The Heart's Work is a multi-book, multi-year publishing project by Copper Canyon Press to secure and advance Jim Harrison's poetic legacy. To date, books published as part of the The Heart's Work include The Essential Poems , Collected Ghazals (with afterword by Denver Butson), Jim Harrison: Complete Poems (produced as both a single volume and a three-volume box set, with introductions by Terry Tempest Williams, Colum McCann, Joy Williams, and John Freeman), and the paperback printing of Dead Man's Float . New projects forthcoming!

"This collection arrives from the spirit world buoyant, its rowdy soul intact."— Raúl Niño, Booklist "Jim Harrison is a modern master of the [ghazal] form." — BookRiot The ghazal, a poetic form rooted in seventh century Arabia, became popular in the United States through the translations of Rumi, Hafiz, and Ghalib. As a young poet, Jim Harrison became enamored with ghazals, and while he ignored most of the formal rules, within the energized couplets he discovered a welcome vehicle for his driving passions, muscular genius, and wrecking-ball rages. The year Outlyer & Ghazals appeared, The New York Times honored the book with inclusion on their coveted “Noteworthy Titles” list, provocatively noting that these poems were “worth loving, hating, and fighting over.” Collected Ghazals gathers all of Harrisons’s published ghazals into a single volume, accompanied by an “Afterword” by poet and noted ghazal writer Denver Butson, who writes that with this collection, Harrison’s ghazals “are ours to witness again in all their messy, brave, honest, grieving, lustful, longing humanity.” "These are raucous, boozy, at times sexually explicit journeys beyond standard forms, often expressing a young poet’s exuberance. Harrison wills us to follow him: 'When I slept in the woods I awoke before dawn / and drank brandy and listened to the birds until the moon / disappeared.' Closing with an illuminating afterword by poet Denver Butson, this collection arrives from the spirit world buoyant, its rowdy soul intact."— Booklist