happy birthday, big jim…
There’d be no hesitation if you were to ask me my favorite writer – its Jim Harrison. Today is the old lion’s birthday, so my thoughts are particularly focused on him. I’d love to sit and visit with him some day, but then again, I don’t know. Its not so much that he’d have feet of clay as that he’d turn into a bear and eat me. Harrison is an unapologetic carnivore of life. I haven’t found many people who read Harrison, which is sad but not surprising. He’s always been an outsider and largely ignored by the east coast literati, but that’s the way he likes it. Some of you may be familiar with the movie Legends of the Fall, starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. Well, that movie is based on a novella Jim Harrison wrote years ago…and amazingly enough wrote it in nine days. I’ve read most all of his fiction (best in my opinion is Returning to Earth) and I’ve recently started reading his poetry. Harrison has always considered himself a poet first and foremost. His most recent offering is Songs of Unreason...I’ll conclude with one of those poems, lines written about his sister who, along with his father, was killed in a car accident when Harrison was a boy.
Sister I wanted to play a song for you on our old $28 phonograph from 1954 but the needle is missing and they no longer make the needles. It is the work of man to make a voice a needle. You were buried at nineteen in wood with Daddy. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to learn the language of the dead. The musical chatter of the tiny yellow finches in the front yard comes closest. It’s midnight and I’m giving my nightly rub to the dog’s tummy, something she truly depends on. Maybe you drifted upward as an ancient bird hoping to nest on the moon. 
What a rich poem. I shall peruse the used bookstores for more of Harrison’s work now
Kendall, may your perusals be fruitful…there’s a small volume titled Braided Creek which is an exchange between Harrison and Ted Kooser…two old men bantering back and forth, and they’ve kept the entries anonymous which is brilliant…its a nice find.
I’m going to do some library research. I’m one of those who has never heard of Jim, but that will soon change.