Copper Canyon Press Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems

Excellent book. To me a lot better than his novels

Belle collection de la poésie de Jim Harrison, l'essentiel est là: la sagesse d'assumer la vie, cette voix qui nous manque tant, l'humour et la profondeur, ce langage magique. Le relire souvent fait preuve de sa pérennité, comme pour ses romans. Le derniers des grands? J'espère que non, on en a besoin. Mais certainement nous avons perdu le bijou rare. Sa poésie reste. Elle nous accompagne comme une rivière.

I knew Harrison as a prose writer, and discovered he was a poet in an episode of Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown". I'm not a big fan of poetry, but Harrison conjures up images and emotions that resonate.

Ok, I adore the poet/writer. Ok, I adore his poems. Ok, I adore quite everything by Jim Harrison. So how is it possible not to have this beautiful last selection of his masterful poetry?

I'm smitten by what he has shown me and where he has taken me in his poems. I take them internally as a universal tonic. They arouse the deep sublime within me. He takes me so close to Nature that my face comes back bloody. A panoply of poems that makes one feel pain and danger, terror, power and magnificence. Obscurity, infinity, suddenness. I disappear as the poem unfolds within me.