Poet/novelist Jim Harrison

The Harrison Sagas Continue. . .

True North, Grove Press, 2004, 385 pages
Returning To Earth, 2007, 280 pages

Jim Harrison is a leading American writer, ranked right up there with John Updike,  Paul Theroux, Joyce Carol Oates, and Richard Ford--all good candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature. (We celebrated his work in our Spring 2006 issue,  but he just won't quit writing sagas. Dedicated reader that we are, we must continue reading and commenting on them, partly out of fear that we might miss something important.

For novels are important. Only novels can tell us what is wrong with our lives and our society, and what is right about them, as well. Books of non-fiction, well, they deal only with facts, don't they, and the representational world. So what do they really have to do with out lives and society? Not much.

The publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, summarizes the plot of True North thus:

The scion of a family of wealthy timber barons, David Burkett has grown up with a father who is a malevolent force more than a father, and a mother made vague and numb by alcohol and pills. He and his sister Cynthia, a firecracker who scandalizes the family at fourteen by taking up with the son of their Finnish-Native American gardener, are mostly left to make their own way. As David comes to adulthood—enlightened and enlivened at various points by an unforgettable triumvirate of intoxicating women—he realizes he must come to terms with his forefathers—rapacious destruction of the woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as well as with the working people who made their wealth possible.

That  will do for starters, but that is about all. The two novels are multi-layered and involve at least three generations. (This is what makes them sagas.) Roman-fleuve it is sometimes called. Harrison likes them—their richness and complexity of the form—and so do I. There is something richly satisfying in living with a large cast of characters (and Harrison's are, in the slangy sense of the word), keeping them all straight (even if they aren't very straight to begin with), and following them through their various affairs, sometimes marriages, illnesses, physical and mental declines, and ultimate deaths.

Such is life.

The characters become a surrogate family, for those of us who need one and for those who don't. And what hard fun it must be for the author, Harrison, to envision each of them and have them come to life in novelistic or fictional fashion during all the years of writing and editing such novels, or sagas.

We are the beneficiaries, we readers.

 *       *     *

Harrison will be 70 this year. He has put on a great deal of weight and has difficulty wading the rivers of his native Northern Michigan and his current home in Montana. (He now lives part of the year in Mexico, as well.)

So he now admits to fishing from a drift boat, with the help of a guide. It is not so much that he likes it this way as it is how things now are. He has adjusted to them, as he has to his weight and need for accommodation. Oh, yes. Since the age of about eight, he has had sight out of only one eye. A girl he knew, back then, poked the other one out. A friend. Friends are like this, he once stated, bitterly.

The first of the linked novels begins with use of the first person familiar, as it might be called. The style sets the mood and tone for all the chapters that follow:

"My name is David Burkett. I'm actually fourth in line of David Burketts beginning in the 1860s when my great-grandfather emigrated from Cornwall, England, to the Upper Peninsula in Northern Michigan. . . .  I have done everything possible to renounce my father but then within the chaos of my life it is impossible to understand the story without telling it." [Page 1.]

And so it begins. But there are time leaps. Suddenly he jumps ahead to when he and his sister, Cynthia (whom he likens to a wolverine), were in high school, snaps quickly back to the novelistic present, and confides what we have in less than two pages have already surmised:

"I'm too impatient to start at the beginning. . . ."

And we are into that "chaos" and soon grow at home in it, for an excellent story-teller is hard at work and we are so quickly in his grasp. The plot is too complex for easy summary here; let it suffice to say Harrison's first person narration allows him to jump back and forth in time at will, and to tell his story the only way he can: thematically and associationally.

There is more Faulkner in his story and his method than, say, Galsworthy or Proust. And there are some nearly impossible bizarre twists of plot and character that leave us feeling, briefly, that perhaps Harrison has gone too far and lost credibility in  his story and its narration. But he quickly wins us back  his skill at weaving a complex plot. It is what wins our attention, or else loses it.

Either one is a Harrison fan, or not. Clearly I am.

Thomas Wood etching,
 "Shack Medicine"

More on Sund and his poetry
Painter and print maker Thomas Wood salutes Robert Sund in this excellent etching titled after Sund's chapbook of the same name, which celebrated the poet's early life on a tranquil arm of the North Fork of the Skagit River near La Conner, Washington.

Of this print, fellow artist Charlie Krafft said, "Doesn't look very much like Fishtown to me," that being where Krafft and Sund, among others, lived for a number of years. I needlessly and pedantically explained that it was Wood's visionary idea of what Fishtown looked like, and Krafft kindly said nothing. Probably he had no idea of what the word "visionary" meant. (Smile.)

Sund had a kindly way of sending friends old (and new) copies of his chapbooks, such as Shack Medicine, which he hand-printed and bound, and often dedicated and sent to one of them, with a short, spontaneous poem penned in, and sometimes with a  little drawing. (I know he did one for me.) This act had a way of deeply touching his friends and might in part explain in part why 300 or so devotees came to celebrate his work and life one wet dreary November night in the Anacortes Art Depot, shortly after his death.

It was a joyous occasion, not at all dreary, with music and drink and friends reading from his work and people emitting loud, appreciative sighs and laughs. It was a gathering unlike any other I've ever attended, and unforgettable.

Robert would have loved it. Many would have said he was there and did.

The poet in middle age
Photo courtesy Mary Randlett

Robert Sund in his student days.

Taos Mountain
Great lines, or not? You be the judge

first reading of Taos Mountain:

p. 21, "How is it when we meet we often feel like the remnants of a forming tribe."

p. 57, ". . . dark meadows of sleep."

p. 15,  " the glazed edge of morning."

p. 19, "The ink wanting to be heard."

and certain words showing up, such as sad, tragic, grief, sorrow. These have not noticeably appeared before in his poems.

plus the full poem below, one of his best:

The Table I Keep

This is the table I keep.
This is my warm spot in the world.

A table to
rest my ink bottle on.
A table
with other tables inside it.
The ink wanting to be heard.

Ink whose body is a river,
whose fullness is
to be joined with other waters.

The ocean,
rolling landward
comes home
one river at a time,
cresting and breaking into song.

Each day at my table
I hear the heartsong
      and the lament,
as one by one
the rivers come home.

*   *   *

Second reading:

p. 13, one finds "Letters lifting their feet."

p. 21, "all our clothes lying on and among the rocks like defeated civilizations."

p. 48, his "blanket of poetry and painting"

p. 53, "The grandeur is in the weaving."

p. 31, "the ink bottle is my wife now." [poems being his children]

on p. 29, his poem Clouds, followed on the next page by his note,

 Basho said

"So we don't get tired of the moon,
clouds come and go."

to which I, as editor, shamelessly rewrite as haiku:

Clouds come and go
so we don't tire of the moon.
Come and go yourself!

p. 65, and from the poem, "When The Wool Blankets Were Woven," Where would wool go to be beautiful
and a story to stretch itself out.

p. 67
Take what comes.
Find your grace in it.

Hidden above the clouds
the true treasure lies untouched

The bright blue fire of heaven
never goes out.

[The book's editors have reproduced the manuscript page of the above text (see below), accompanied by one of  Sund's fine drawings.

This poem closes Part II, The Weavers section. It is not my favorite part of the book, but this poem is nice indeed.

*       *     *

Part III, The Path Home, is very good. The poet, living in Taos for less than four months, finds spring coming on fast, and longs for his native Pacific Northwest. It is planting time, and he is filled with thoughts of the earth bearing vegetables, flowers, and fruit. He is from farming stock, of course, though one should not make too much of this link, for not many farmers become literary, let alone poets.

It is home he longs for, sea and sky.

He writes on p. 87, "Between the spinach and the/potatoes/is everything/you need to know." Ah, yes.

On page 92, at the start of the prose/poem, "Bringing Seeds Home," he says, "It's coming closer to the day of departure. The planting weather has come. Things are rolling along, and friends expect me soon.  There is an empty space where I stood or sat or walked or danced. I will step back into it when I get home. It's my work to be in that space—familiar, comfortable, restful, enlivening—to live in it and be alive in it. Specific, particular, and definite."

Perhaps this statement might well stand as a coda for Robert Sund,—his life, and his work in both poetry and prose.

There are more vague poetic echoes of his mentor, William Carlos Williams, in this book than of his esteemed teacher, Theodore Roethke, or so it seems to me. I think of Williams' "no ideas but in things." Each word is to be so precisely chosen that no other word could serve in its place, nor with such a clear definition of purpose and the poem's execution.

Sund is able to see himself as both a person and a sage, to envision himself moving through and cross the span of his lifetime, both as actor and person, subject and object, of a life spent in dedication to the art of poetry. There was not room for much else; perhaps a little music.

His accomplishment may not have been evident to many until recently, including those of us who knew him over and through the years, but the dedication of his friends (perhaps disciples?) Hughes, Greeno, and McNulty have brought to all of us who love poetry the sum of a lifetime of study and practice of his art and craft. Now we are able to see him performing at his best.

That best is pretty good.

If you don't own any of Sund's books, probably the best one to buy is Poems from Ish River Country, which is his collected and contains ten of the Taos Mountain Series reviewed in this issue of Kingfisher Journal.

And, no, I won't lend you mine.

Robert C. Arnold
Editor

Kingfisher Journal Salutes:

Robert Sund. . . and his most recent posthumous publication,

Taos Mountain

From Poet's House Press in Anacortes, Washington, comes Taos Mountain, a book of poetry, prose, and 17 paintings by Robert Sund, his third book and second posthumous collection produced by a loving group of friends and the executors of his estate.

112 pages, 7.25X11 ISBN: 0-9796905-0-8. $60.

Order from:

http://www.poetshousetrust.org/

"Cedar Mist," by Robert Sund, painting from Taos Mountain
used with permission of its owner,
Chip Hughes

"The Ink Waiting to be Heard"

About ten years before his death in 2001, Poet/Painter Robert Sund left his beloved Pacific Northwest for a visit to old friends, Arthur and Ginny Greeno in Taos, New Mexico, where they owned and operated the Apple Tree Restaurant.  It was an absorbing and enlightening experience. How different, how wonderfully foreign, it must have been for him, far from the conifers and green rivers where he grew up and spent nearly all of his life.

Inspired by the region, he visited with his friends until their workaday lives had sent them to bed, then, as of long-established habit, he stayed up to greet the dawn, writing, smoking, reading, and sometimes working on a series of paintings inspired by the native blanket-weaving artisans of the New Mexico region. And with the coming of the dawn, he would go to sleep for much of the day—till just before his hosts came home from work. Then his working day began again.

He stayed in Taos only three months, from mid-March till mid-June, 1991, but what a lot of good work he did there, until he began to think of his garden in the boatyard in Anacortes, and the necessity of planting his flowers and vegetables, if he wanted to have any to enjoy looking at or to eat over the coming summer and fall.

I am not a gardener, but am married to one and can recognize this growing imperative and how it can be resisted but not ignored. Sund speaks of this force in a prose narrative in Taos Mountain, near the end of the book (later edited and organized by his friend, Chip Hughes): "It's coming closer to the day of departure. The planting weather has come. . . ."

Then back to verse:

"It is a clarity, the garden is, that is praiseworthy—the clarity enhanced by fragrance, flower, and fruit." [Page 92]

And what did he plan to plant? Winter squash, radishes, carrots, beans, and onions. A lot of flowers.

                              *       *     *

When Sund died, a little more than 10 years later, he left "a giant manuscript" of largely unedited material from his time at Taos—371 loose sheets of "plain paper" filled with his beautiful calligraphic scrawl in ink, mixed with drawings.  He had talked to Chip Hughes about them editing the manuscript down together to publishable size, but when he sickened he asked Hughes to do it for him. I mean, that is trust.  (It is also a kind of irresponsible desperation.) Sund's method was to compose carefully, look the pages over the next day or so, put them aside, then move on to something new and fresh. So the "editing down" together never took place.

He and Editor Hughes had joked about the Ezra Pound/Robert Frost idea of poets working in collaboration—"squeezing the water out of each other's work." Having to do the work alone, without consultation with the poet, was a tremendous and time-consuming job. Taos Mountain is the result, and we are the fortunate beneficiaries. Hopefully there may be enough material left for a third book, but I doubt it. We buffs will have to wait and see.

 *       *     *

In Taos Mountain, the reader is free to find his favorite poems and each reader's selection will be a different one. And the same reader, in a different time, on a fresh rereading, may be surprised to find that he likes poems he skipped over the first time better than the ones he settled on as favorites the first time through. I know that I did.

  *       *     *

The weavers of ceremonial blankets greatly affected Sund, and he produced a number of paintings in gouache on hand-made paper, some of it made by Hughes, who writes Kingfisher, "Indeed, five or six of the paintings were done on the wonderful handmade Abaca paper I was making at the time in San Antonio, that I sent a batch of to Robert in Taos and that he loved, as it took the water-based paint extremely well--not too surfacey and not too soakingly, with the colors standing out well."

The paintings seem to the editor to be much alike, but each is oddly different.  The paintings Sund displayed at the Taos fair and gave to his hosts are among the best. Hughes owns "Cedar Mist," and gave Kingfisher permission to publish it so that others may enjoy it.

 It actually was painted before Sund left the Pacific Northwest, about 1988, but is "predictive," according to Hughes, of the work he did in New Mexico. Another good one is "Prayer for Blue Corn," which  he gave to Host Greeno and his family, along with several others, in gratitude for housing and feeding him.

This was Sund's Way.

Robert C. Arnold
Editor/Publisher

"Prayer for Blue Corn" painting by Robert Sund, lent by owner Arthur Greeno

 *       *     *

(for more on Robert Sund, go to the middle column, about half way down the opposite page)

BACK ISSUES of Kingfisher Journal
(Available only online)

<sub>Kingfisher Journal Vol.1, No. 1, Poet Robert Sund Issue;

Kingfisher Journal Vol.1, No. 2, Iridescent Light Issue

Kingfisher Journal Vol.1, No. 3, Sylvia Plath Issue;

Kingfisher Journal Vol.1, No. 4, James Wright Issue

Kingfisher Journal Vol.2, No.1, Richard Hugo Issue

Kingfisher Journal, Vol.2, No. 1, Theodore Roethke Commemorative Issue</sub>

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 2, No 3, W.S. Merwin/Richard Ford issue}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol.2, No. 4, Fishtown Issue}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, William Stafford Issue}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol 3, No. 2, David Wagoner Edition}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 3, No. 3, Edna O'Brien Issue}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol 3, No. 4 Anthony Powell and Donald Justice issue.}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol 4, No. 1, Robert Sund and Graham Greene Issue.}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol 4, No. 2 Saul Bellow  and Robert Creeley Issue.}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol 4, No. 3 Philip Whalen and Vincent Van Gogh.}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 4, Number 4, J. M. Coetzee, W. S. Merwin, Red Pine (aka Bill Porter)}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol.5, Number 1, Poet Frank O'Hara and Artist Larry Rivers}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 5, Number 2, Jim Harrison Issue}

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 5, Number 3, Carolyn Kizer, David Wagoner,
 W. S. Merwin}

<sub>Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 5, Number 4, Red Pine and James Salter

Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 6, Number 1, Kenneth Rexroth, Wes Wehr, Helmi Jovenen, Taha Mulhammad Ali</sub>

_{Kingfisher Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, Dmitri Shostakovich, Richard Ford, Robert Sund, Academy Awards, movies}