550: Jim Harrison

17 April 2007
Jim Harrison: The Theory & Practice of Rivers and New Poems
After Dr. Keeler pointed out my tendency to “take you on the journey” of how I came to appreciate each of the class poets, I had intended to avoid that. But, as one who has tried to read some of Harrison’s novels and has had countless personal interactions with the man and his family, I did not look forward to taking his poetry seriously (or for him to take it seriously, thoughtfully, and elegantly as he does); I really didn’t think I could do it. But once I quit imagining his voice reading them (intolerable), I (with a self-professed distaste for nature poetry) thoroughly enjoyed these. Harrison manages to blur the lines and exploit the expectations of the human/animal (nature) dichotomy without losing respect for either, and he does this in an incredibly eloquent way. His natural places are fully encroached upon by cabins and canoes, and yet there is no synthesis or true understanding in either direction between Humanity (and all the crap, physically and conceptually, that it brings) and Nature. Following are some comments on passages which struck me in this volume.

The Theory & Practice of Rivers
4 This is the ascent out of water:
there is no time but that
of convenience, time so that everything
won’t happen at once; dark
doesn’t fall – dark comes up
out of the earth, an exhalation.
This grabbed me, in part, due to its relevance to Sexson’s class with its ascents and descents, elements, underworld, time, and of course for me, spirals – “time so that everything won’t happen at once.” The spiral exists in interesting relation to both space and time so that nothing is every exactly simultaneous or exactly repeated. Time is here seen as so intractable that it is portrayed as the earth breathing. A similar theme is returned to on page 14 with a musing on circles and time: “And because of time, circles / that no longer close / or return to themselves.” Harrison shows his understanding that there are no neat and tidy resolutions, no simple or complete answers, and no returning to an imagined idyllic past where everything was “as it should be.” Harrison seems to struggle with nostalgia in this volume. He frequently uses the past tense, tells stories, and reminisces, but something always seems to be frustrated in the remembering, in the telling, or in the attempt to pull meaning out of these incidents. Perhaps this refrain is central to his project in these pages: “The days are stacked against / what we think we are” (6-8).
*****
15 . . . Who among us whites, child
or adult, will sing while we die?
How is the way a culture “deals” with death indicative of the way it lives and the meaning and peace it ascribes to a life? Does this suggest that “we” are less close to nature, and thus more separated from understandings of life and death, than are other peoples? This passage is followed by the story of a guy who, when he thinks he is about to die, can only think that it is appropriate, even necessary, to drink. This tale concludes:
16 . . . It is hard to learn how
to be lost after so much training.
I read this very reflexively. This aspect of an education in literature is one of the things that bothers me greatly. We become blind to so much because we are trained to look for and do other things. There is much to be gained from being lost. I liken it to my musical education. I was given piano lessons for several years growing up; I learned how to read music, musical theory, classical and hymn music, and just a little on how to improvise the accompaniment of hymns. Sadly, because of all this training, I find exploring on the piano, attempting to play by ear, improvising without a guide, or playing more contemporary pieces to be damn near impossible. And even though I’ve forgotten most of the technicalities and my playing is embarrassingly rusty, I cannot forget how to read music; I cannot feel my way around the keys; I cannot seem to lose myself without unconsciously falling back on my training to guide me. And because of this, I have not truly felt the joy of creating music, of being lost in that beautiful way that allows all possibilities. I have too much “system” and not enough room for texture and possibility, as Harrison here laments:
23 A “system” suggests the cutting off
i.e., in channel morphology, the reduction,
the suppression of texture to simplify
**** A couple passages which pulled me up short:
24 . . . Writers
and politicians share an embarrassed moment
when they are sure all problems will disappear
if you get the language right.
Damn it. I’m guilty of this. I just watched Labyrinth this weekend for the first time since childhood, and I was struck by its emphasis on getting the language right. Sarah can’t accomplish anything without the right words, but it is, after all, just a fantasy. I will admit, though, that I haven’t quite given up on the power of language, though I am not naïve enough to believe that “all problems will disappear.”
28 This was nature’s own, a beauty too strong
for life; a place to drown not live.
Is this menacing fumarole more natural or more important or more revealing about nature than a peaceful, life-sustaining pond with drinkable water? Nature’s beauty is “too strong” for us to understand or truly appreciate.
******
What He Said When I Was Eleven
56 . . . When I miss
flies three times with the swatter //
they go free for good. Fair is fair.
There is too much nature pressing against
the window as if it were a green night;
Cabin Poem
63 I reject oneness with bears.
She has two cubs and thinks she
owns the swamp I thought I bought.
While Harrison presents his speaker constantly surrounded by nature, he cannot get away from realizing that there is an inevitable, unbreachable distance between, on the one hand, the human, concepts of ownership and fairness, meditations on death and aging, and, on the other, the natural (Nature?), the land, plants, and animals, that which we only think we have conquered and understood.