Around 30 years ago I met Jim Harrison and had supper with Jim and his publisher, a great Lemuria pal, Sam Lawrence. It was a small gathering of Jim’s followers, mostly booksellers. That evening was an exciting night for me and the beginning of my friendship with Jim and Sam.

Becoming a fan of Jim’s work was already well established, but from that night the joy of feeling like one of Jim’s tribe grew. Today, since first reading Jim’s work 35 years ago, I consider the meaning of Jim’s words to have had a profound influence on me.

Again, as my last two blogs, I am still celebrating  poetry month. I’m writing about Jim’s new book of poems, published in the Fall of 2011, Songs of Unreason. I read Songs, two pages a day, sometimes rereading. However when I finished, I started Songs over and reread the same way. I spend about six months enjoying these poems. My reading time was so marvelous that I could have read a third or fourth time.

Here are a few passages from these songs that I hope radiate the power of Jim’s voice.

from “Notation”

Nearly everything we are taught is false

except how to read. All these poems that drift

upward in our free-floating minds hang there

like stationary birds with a few astonishing

girls and women. (5)

from “Skull”

The only answer I’ve found is the moving

water whose music is without a single lyric. (25)

from “River III”

You have to hold your old

heart lightly as the female river holds

the clouds and trees, its fish

and the moon, so lightly but firmly

enough so that nothing gets away. (71)

from “Suite of Unreason”

What vices we can hold in our Big Heads

and Big Minds, our Humor and Humility.

We don’t march toward death, it marches toward us

as a summer thunderstorm came slowly across

the lake long ago. See the lightning of mortality dance,

the black clouds whirling as if a million crows. (130)

from “Moping”

. . . Memories follow us

like earaches in childhood . . . (131)

from “Death Again”

 . . . Of course it’s a little hard

to accept your last kiss, your last drink,

your last meal . . .

We’ll know as children again all that we are

destined to know, that the water is cold

and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far. (141)

I want to thank Jim for his friendship to Lemuria and me and for all the gifts his words have given to all the Lemurians that are part of his tribe.

“The Blue Shawl”

The other day at the green dumpsters,

an old woman in a blue shawl

told me that she loved my work. (65)

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