Thank you all who joined us alongside Rebecca Solnit, Jamie Harrison, and author of Jim Harrison’s forthcoming biography, Todd Goddard, for our livestream event in support of the forthcoming reissue of Jim’s beautiful book, The Theory and Practice of Rivers. Hosted by Joseph Bednarik, this 70-minute event featured stories, poems, musings on rivers, thoughts from Rebecca on her introduction to the book, and (with luck!) audio recordings—retrieved from archival tapes—of Jim reading from the long poem “Theory and Practice of Rivers.”
Jim Harrison: Final Phase of the Heart’s Work: https://bit.ly/49zjfIt
Date of Event: 3/4/24 at 5:15 PM PT
Welcome welcome welcome one and all thank you so much for coming here this evening uh my name is Joseph bnar I serve as the co-publisher here at Copper Canyon press I am coming to you live from my home in Port Towns in Washington uh which is on Coast Salish and scallum
Land uh wherever you may be in the world right now we encourage you to familiarize yourself with the indigenous past and present of the place where you live uh personally I am so delighted that you’re here to celebrate the life and the Poetry of Jim Harrison uh and to
Help support this ambitious Legacy project that’s entering its fourth and Final Phase uh the hearts work Jim Harrison’s poetic Legacy uh just to let you know we have we had to uh increase our Zoom license in order to accommodate all the people who wanted to come to the event tonight
So thank you very much you are absolutely in the right place uh in a community with fellow poetry lovers uh if you’re seeing and hearing me right now uh we can all thank our Tech Wizards behind the scenes Marissa veto Janine Armstrong and Casey tarz uh thank you
Marissa Casey and Janine for making this online event possible uh and as always we express our abundant gratitude to the National Endowment for the Arts the Washington State Arts commission the hawton foundation uh to our volunteer board of directors both past and present many of whom are in attendance tonight I
Want to personally thank the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of readers uh who over the past six years have supported the hearts workk Jim Harrison’s poetic Legacy uh I hope that everyone here tonight will join us in this Final Phase uh and as you may know Jim called his poetry both the reading
And writing of poetry his Hearts work uh and that’s why we name this Legacy project the hearts work uh and all of this would not be possible without the support of Jim’s immediate family uh Mary David Anna and Jamie uh and we thank you for entrusting your brothers
And your father’s poetic Legacy with Copper Canyon also a few shout outs to folks uh I know who are out there uh Joyce Harrington Bailey Jim’s longtime Aid to camp and Trustee of the Jim Harrison Trust uh Debbie and Dan Gerber Jonna terano and Peter Lewis Jim’s bibliographer
Gregory or will ble leisel and Hank Meyer Larry Mobby and Lois Bailey Stephen Spencer who runs the indispensable Facebook page for Jim Harrison our friends at Consortium Book Sales and distribution a special shout out to the Evans Family sarl Austin and John to Jim’s Publishers in New York City Grove
Uh more Morgan entriken Judy hotton and Amy Hundley and finally a huge thank you uh to one of the country’s greatest book collectors Bruce Khan uh who has Faithfully supported the mission of Copper Canyon for decades uh I actually had the Good Fortune of visiting with Bruce this summer um and seeing His
Stunning collection of Jim Harrison material it was amazing so thank you thank you thank you Bruce for your support and so tonight um we are all helping to celebrate and expand the readership for Jim’s seventh book of poems called the theory and practice of rivers uh reflecting back on my own
Reading life um I received my first copy of theory and practice of rivers as a birthday gift uh when I turned 22 um and I carried that paperback with me pretty much everywhere and I read poems aloud to everyone who would listen and by reading those poems aloud uh I was
Spreading the word from person the person to person about Jim’s poetry now at that time none of my friends knew who Jim was uh and I remember one of my professors asking me like sort of irritated actually because I kept bugging him about Jim Harrison he’s like
All right all right all right so tell me why why do you love this guy’s work so much and to me that was music to my ears because it was a huge opening where I could finally talk about Jim Harrison and decades later I actually sent that
Same Professor a copy of the essential poems uh which Copper Canyon had just published uh and I included a short note that read in part I love this guy even more now so now through the hearts work uh you can join the fund of sharing the work by helping supporting the
Publication promotion and distribution of the theory and practice of rivers um throughout tonight we’re going to share links in the chat we will have QR codes on the screen um and all these will take you to a special page on the raer Canyon press website um where you can make a tax deductible
Donation um you can also go to our website anytime open 247 and you can easily find the pitch uh our goal our total goal is to raise $75,000 by June 30 uh and tonight we are trying to raise at least a third of that $25,000 for this event um which be an
Appropriate and proper launch toward the final goal and please know that every donation helps uh and for a donation of $150 um your name will be printed on a special acknowledgements page in the book uh and this has been a feature of all of the books that we have published
As part of the hearts work uh and frankly it’s my favorite part seeing all those names of all those people who love Jim’s work and who are helping to bring poems and books uh into the world and not only that but to have those books
And poems travel far and wide uh so as I mentioned links in the chat QR codes on screen visit Copper Canyon website 247 please make your donation be generous and also if you feel like it invite your friends and so for some context for tonight’s event uh we began the hearts
Work back in 2018 uh and together we’ve published five books with a sixth on the way um we’ve published Dead Man’s float in paperback uh we published the essential poems we published collected hles uh we published a big thick book called complete poems uh both as a single
Volume and as a three volume box set uh we published braided Creek an expanded anniversary edition and now we’re raising funds for this final project the theory and practice of rivers as a standalone book um and what’s interesting about the hearts work one of the things that we did a special feature
Of it was to catalyze uh critical conversations about Jim’s poetry and we also included an introduction or an afterward for each book and we’re honored to have published or soon to publish Pieces by Rebecca solnet who’s here with us tonight uh Terry Tempest Williams Naomi sheab NY John Freeman Kum
McAn Denver butson Joy Williams and Ted koer um I encourage you all to read these deep and these touching pieces uh and if you’re so inclined um write your own review of Jim’s poetry a reflection on Jim poetry and publish it somewhere and so to begin uh tonight I want to share with
You uh two personal stories about the theory and practice of rivers um first for years this broadside uh hung right next to my front door it is the poem called kobun uh from the theory and practice of rivers and it reads hot didn’t need a zafu saying that
As ass was sufficient the heads a cloud anchor that the feet must follow Trav the light he said or don’t travel at all so every time I left my house I was reminded to travel light and of course I kept seeing that broadside and I memorize the poem uh and I carry that
Poem with me Wherever I Go part of my traveling light my second story about theory and practice of rivers in the fall after Jim died um there was a memorial dinner at the Murray hotel in Livingston Montana I was an invited guest I sat next to the great Montana
Painter Russell chadam during dinner uh the event absolutely magnificent it’s the last time I smoked cigarettes and of course the next day I was invited to enter for One Last Time Jim’s writing Studio alone so there I was in the writing Studio where I had been at many many
Times before working with Jim on his poetry titles like saving daylight and Dead Man’s float I was there alone listening watching feeling I bowed to the desk I bowed to Jim’s Altar and then I opened the door to leave for a final time travel light he said or don’t travel at
All and after I left the studio I discovered one of Jim’s closest friends weeping I put my arm around his shoulder make some human to human contact I want my friend back he sbed I want my friend back and I knew exactly what he meant but the river Moves In One
Direction and the next day in a gesture of supreme Grace Jim’s family offered the opportunity to Steward one of Jim’s keepsakes uh one of the objects that he kept in his writing Studio let us know what you might want they said and I knew exactly Which object I would love to
Bring into my life seemingly mundane object that I saw on Jim’s altar many many times and here are two couplets from the poem looking forward to age from theory and practice of rivers if I have become famous I’ll wear a green janitor suit and row a wooden
Boat from a key ring on my belt will hang 33 keys that open no doors I asked for the key ring with 33 keys that open no doors and a few months later this treasure arrived that I hope you can see and hear and I laugh of course because there
Are only 12 Keys proving once again that numbers were not Jim’s strong suit this is this is uh one of my most prized possessions uh though my more literal-minded friends might ask why would you want keys that open no doors to which I respond because these Keys also do not lock any
Doors and thus we are gifted a key ring and thus we are gifted a poem I miss my friend though I visit with him frequently whenever I open his books and read lines like this from the theory and practice of rivers I forget where I heard that poems
Are designed to waken sleeping gods in our time they’ve taken on nearly unrecognizable shapes as Gods will do and so tonight I promise you this I will be reading Jim Harrison’s poems until I can read no longer and I invite you to do the same now it is my distinct pleasure to
Introduce Todd Goddard as our first guest uh Todd is a professor of literary studies at Utah Valley University and he’s the author of The forthcoming biography entitled devouring time Jim Harrison a life Todd Gard Joseph thank you for that wonderful introduction and greetings everyone this is fantastic um it’s truly an
International intimate Gathering of of parisians um I am absolutely thrilled to be here to be joining um Joseph and Jamie and Rebecca and all of you out there from um a very diverse set of places it looks like um and and talking about reading and listening to Jim’s poetry I mean what
Could be better um I’m also super excited about the forthcoming reissue of the theory and practice of rivers as I know you are uh and to be honest I can’t can hardly wait to read Rebecca’s introduction um it’s going to be fantastic my personal fascination with Jim’s poetry was probably the driving
Force for me to begin writing a biography U and the book has taken me on a pretty Unforgettable Journey quite literally um I’ve traveled to Michigan Montana Patagonia Arizona Mississippi New York and France um and especially to Grand Valley State University um near Grand Rapids Michigan where Jim’s collected papers
Are housed his Archive of papers is a colossal collection of materials it includes about 9 boxes of his private correspondence alone and literally hundreds of boxes of hand written drafts notebooks screenplays photos memorabilia it takes up an entire section of a massive basement in the bottom of the
Archive um and I spent nearly four months there working on this book making a daily Trek across campus to Sidman house working with the wonderful archivist there but I’ll tell you my research has always been of course in careful conversation with uh with Jim’s work and especially with his poetry
Poetry was Jim Harrison’s First Love uh he would refer to it as the true bones of his life he thought it was what he’d be remembered for and time and again in moments of distress or depression some of his darkest times really it was poetry that would that
Would pull him through it um it would nourish and restore him and some of those darkest times were some of the most productive times for his poetry as well when Jim said about writing his Memoir off to the side around 2000 he wrote to one of his closest
Friends Tom MCU that he had the deepest questions about the project uh for one he worried that everything he had to say was already in his work or in his music as he put it in that letter he also worried that reliving certain early memories um like the
Deaths of his father Winfield and his beloved sister Judy both of whom some of you may know were tragically killed together in a car accident when Jim was in his 20s uh would be harrowing indeed as he put it of course he went on to write off to
The side and he thought it worth writing but I think his observation speaks in part to the intensely autobiographical nature of his work his poetry I think is a distillation of a lifetime study of Consciousness and I like to think that nowhere else had Jim been so probing and
Honest and observant about what he thought of the world and his life in it you can open almost randomly to any poem in Copper Canyon’s magnificent Jim Harrison complete poems and find that it’s in some way autobiographical I mean just think of poems like marriage or diabetes or
Barebacked writer or and where is Jim Harrison one of his very first poems is a great example of this and I think in a way it would set the tone for all that would follow um I’m going to read a selection it’s one of my favorite poems
Because it’s so early and and it’s raw in a way that only very early work can be it’s called sketch for a job uh job application blank and it’s from his collection pling song which was published in 1965 here it goes my left eye is blind and jogs like
A Milky Sparrow in its socket my my nose is large and never flares in Anger the front teeth bucked but not in lechery I sucked my thumb until the age of 12 oh my youth was happy and I was never lonely though my friends called me pig ey and the teachers thought me
Looney when I bruised my psyche kept intact I fell from horses and once a cow but never pigs a neighbor lost a hand to a s but I had some fears the salesman of eyes his case was full of fishy bobbles against black velvet jeweled Gore the great cocked hoof of a Belgian
Mayare a nest of milk snakes by the water trough electric fences my uncle’s hounds the pump arm of an oil well the chop and were of a combine in the Sun from my ancestors the sweds I suppose I inherit the love of rainy Woods kegs of Herring and neat whiskey I
Remember long night nights of peanuckle the Bulge of red man in my grandpa’s cheek the rug smelled of manure and kerosene they laughed loudly and didn’t speak for days but on the other side from the German menites their Rags smoked prayers and Porky daughters I got intolerance and aimless
Diligence in 51 during a Revival I was saved I prayed on a cold register for hours and woke up lame I was baptized by immersion in the tank at Williamston the rusty water stung my eyes I left off the old things of the flesh but not for
Long Jim had written that poem soon after his wife Linda and his mother uh Norma sort of by Family consent basically shipped Jim off to Boston in the early 1960s to find a job after the deaths of Windfield and Judy Jim had grounded to a depressive standstill um he wasn’t working he
Wasn’t really writing though he desperately wanted to uh and he would stay in Boston with his brother John and his wife Rebecca or Becky there while he looked for a job he would stay up late at night in the kitchen writing poems some of the first complete poems of his
Life uh as he was assembling PL song the title sketch for a job application blank as you can imagine right was written in the midst of this frantic job search in Boston um he was busy filling out applications and Becky was typing them for him uh typing his
Cover letters and and uh Jim was putting in applications all over the place job was a word that Jim very much disliked at the time the beginnings of that poem um as you heard address the loss of vision in Jim’s left eye that milky socket which the accident occurred during a childhood
Accident and it describes his really really his affective response to it it speaks to his fears as he writes um at one point Jim had been sold a thick lens for his eye by sort of a snake oil salesman type and the lens was supposed to restore some some Vision in his eye
And of course the lens didn’t work didn’t improve his sight and Jim W up tossing it into the woods behind his house eventually along with his hopes and to make matters worse had’ spent a lot of money had saved all this money for a trip to France that he had put
Toward the lens and he would fall into quite a depression afterward Jim goes on in that poem to reflect on his rural upbringing in Michigan his grandparents farm and his own brief but intense infatuation with the Baptist faith when he had become a sort of stump preacher at revivalist
Meetings uh attending religious Retreats and such and for a Time Jim Harrison rejected everything from foul language to drinking smoke sex and even dancing in the name of religion the old things of the flesh as he calls it in the poem now Jump Ahead many years later in
The mid 1980s Jim would dedicate the theory and practice of rivers to Gloria Ellen Harrison 1964 to 1979 is the dedication reads Gloria was Jim’s niece and the daughter of his brother John and sister-in-law Becky who had stayed with in Boston in the fall of 1979 soon after
The release of Jim’s Legends of the Fall Gloria was tragically hit by a car while riding her bike near Guilford Connecticut uh over Labor Day weekend she would lie in a coma until December when the family finally removed her from life support after Christmas the memorial service which Jim
Writes about in in theory and practice was held on a Saturday December 29th at an Episcopalian Church that John and Becky attended in New Haven and the cemetery I think was was close to the water everyone would remember the glitter of Long Island’s sound in the distance and the cold piercing wind that
Blew off of it that day and the theory and practice of rivers as a collection I believe is a deeply meditative work that Mourns Gloria and reflects on her death um at one point in the collection like I said Jim recalls her burial service and I’d like to read a selection
This is from the title poem theory and practice of rivers Jim writes near the Estuary north of Guilford my brother recites the Episcopalian burial service over his dead daughter Gloria as in Gloria in excelsus I cannot bear this passion passion and courage my eyes turned toward the swamp and see so blurred
They’ll never quite clear themselves again the inside of the eye vitous humor is the same pulp found inside the squid I can see Gloria in the snow and in the water she lives in the snow and water and in my eyes this is a song for
Her now her death is real and immediate and painful as anything nonetheless I think inevitably echoed the death of Judy for the entire family um both died at a tragically young age Gloria’s middle name Ellen was also Judy’s middle name as Jim would later write speaking
Of the pain the family felt at the time he wrote nothing is harder to deal with than a small casket after the collection was released John wrote to thank Jim he said this he wrote this art and duckhead are long duckhead I believe Ezra pound said that and even though
Most of his work remains Beyond me that statement does not a long poem and a river poem to boot John was deeply moved of course that Jim had chosen to remember glory in the poems and he felt nourished in his words by The Collection it add at the end of the
Letter I am pleased at age 50 that I still love my brother Jim had also sent the collection to his mother Norma as a surprise and she too was touched by it she had enjoyed it immensely she wrote to her son feeling that I was seeing you a bit
And loving sentences like I’m trying to become alert enough to live and your reference to John reading the funeral service Jim had once mentioned to his mother mother that she might find it difficult to read his work as uh it’s so often dealt with the deaths of family
Members directly or indirectly but the reverse seemed to be true Jim later wrote that the collection as a whole was an attempt to render what could keep one alive in a progressively more unpleasant world and the answers he provides I think in the collection seem to lie with
His own family and the natural world as he would write the rivers of my life moving looms of light wolf Prince and uvial fan the Sun the moon the Earth and his daughter Jim’s visits to home and it seems to me that Jim was always looking for and often finding
Reasons to live in a diminishing world and I think that goes all the way back to letters um from you senan um in an interview with his friend Jim Fergus for the Paris review Jim would say that in a life properly lived you’re a river you touch things lightly or deeply
You move along because life herself moves and you can’t stop it you can’t figure out a benow game plan applicable to all situations you just have to go with the beingness of life I love that and I think that was what Jim meant by fluidity something he had learned from
Spending so much time on and around Rivers fishing swimming that was movement that was whirl one a word he liked to use that was dancing um had had also say in that at same interview that even the next meal is worth waiting for not terribly surprising um claim or statement coming
From Jim Harrison of course indeed he describes in that collection a meal he made with Jamie when she returned home to Michigan from New York City that I’m always sort of envious about and want to be eating at the moment venison with truffles he writes also roast Quail for
Christmas breakfast also a wild turkey some roast malards and Grouse also a catatory of rabbit and pheasant before I pass the conversation along and back to Joseph I’d like to conclude by reading One More poem from the collection saving daylight it’s called the man who looked for
Sunlight and as I read this maybe um think about the way Jim uses the word sunlight in here I it reminds me of a sh ship’s bell ringing uh in a deep fog in at night and it increases as the Palm moves uh steadily toward relief and a
Resolution nine days of dark cold rain in October some snow three gales of off Lake Superior with the cabin’s Tin Roof humming Beethoven the Woodcock Weather Vein whirling and thum ping like a kettle drum tree limbs crashing in the woods at dawn a gust made small white caps on the
River Marquette NPR promised sunlight on Thursday I sit here reflecting I burned a whole cord of wood this week I’m 10 years old again sitting here waiting for the sunlight petting my dog Rose sitting by the window straining for sunlight I’m not going to drown myself
In the cold dark river but I really would like sunlight finally clouds Rush by well beyond the speed limit and there’s a glimpse of sunlight a few seconds of sunlight enough for today the sunlight glistening on the wet forest and my dog sleeping by the window um I’ll close out my section for
The evening with those beautiful words and with sunlight um and thank everyone again for joining in tonight thank you so much oh my goodness Todd that was gorgeous thank you so much for uh for that discussion of Jim I absolutely cannot wait to read your biography um and once
It arrives it is going right to the top of my reading list um really gorgeous gorgeous insights thank you um and I love the idea of you sitting at the archive in Grand Rapids uh at Grand Valley State University it is absolutely one of my holy sites on the planet so
Now it’s time to introduce uh Jim’s eldest daughter jimie Harrison uh Jaimie is the author of six novels including the extraordinary the Widow Nash uh she was also um years and years and years ago the managing editor of Clark City Press uh and for some very deep Intel uh
Jim’s poem lullabi for a daughter was written for jimie and we’re actually going to hear Jim read that poem a little later in the evening so jimie please join us hi thank you Joseph and um thank you Todd for that wonderful um introduction of all my father’s varied facets um I
Really want want to thank Copper Canyon for doing this massive long uh heart’s work in putting everything out and for all the people who did the lovely essays that have gone in the fronts of all the books um really beautiful work from Joy Williams John Freeman um Rebecca soon colum
Mccan um a couple things that uh Todd talked about that I kind of wanted to react to First um I love the fact that he talked about the variety of uh my dad and his family really loving earthy hardcore family who went through some very hard times um the deaths of
Daughters in a couple of generations um which really marked all of us but I also want to point out that um you know he wrote about food a lot he wrote about he was a very earthy guy he um was completely he wrote Transcendent poetry
But he was a very impatient man but one thing people need to know about the whole um feeding me wonderful food at uh Christmas bit I just want to get this in there is that that whole essay um is talking about how he’s a food bully and
He’d actually brought me to tears by the morning of that meal because he’d fed me so much it was just so far gone um the uh bakanal every time we’d get together anyway I want to read um one poem I’m going to read here is uh kind of more
The angry Jim um the Jim who grew up in Michigan who’s from a family of Swedish socialists um and then the others are really about family uh they’re about his great-grandfather and they’re about um the slow wind down and his really difficult last few years um he thought
Of poetry as something that he um but this first one the brand new Statue of Liberty um which is dedicated to Lee aoka uh is is is Jim on fire at the at the ugliness of the world I was commissioned in a Dream by Aja also the black pope of Brazil
Tankred to design a seven tiered necklace of 7,000 skulls for the Statue of Liberty of course from a distance they’ll look like pearls but in November when the strongest winds blow the skulls will rattle wildly bone against metal a crack and shatter of bone against metal the true sound of History this metal
Striking bone I’m not going to get heavy-handed a job is a job and I’ve least a football field for the summer gathered a group of ladies who are art lovers least in advanced in advance a bull Sikorski Freight helicopter to drop on the necklace funding comes from Ford Foundation Rockefeller the
Nea there is one Jewish skull from Atlanta two from Mississippi but this is basically an indigenous cast except skulls from tribes of blacks who got a free ride over from Africa representative skulls from all the Indian tribes an assortment of grizzly wolf coyote and buffalo skulls but what beauty when the morning
Summer Sun glances off these bony pites and her great iron lips quivering in a smile smile almost a smirk so that she’ll drop the torch to fondle the jewels and now for a change of pace this is um this poem what he said when I was 11 is about
Uh my great-grandparents HRA Hala and John Walgren who um if anybody’s read the novel farmer this is essentially the setting for this um and my my father spent a lot of his childhood at their place they were very very poor they bought very bad land they
Had a hard time making it and they were still in the middle of that hard time when he was a boy what he said when I was 11 August a dense heat wave at the cabin mixed with torrents of rain the two tracks become miniature rivers in
The Russian Orthodox Church one does not talk to God one sings this empty and Sun blasted land has a voice rising in shimmers I did not sing in Moscow but St Basil’s in lenr raised quiet tune but now seven worlds away I hang the kazus mosus from the ceiling and catch seven
Flies in the first hour buzzing madly against the stickiness I’ve never seen the scissor tailed fly catcher a favorite bird of my youth the worn aabon card pinned on the wall what I miss when I miss flies three times with a swatter they go free for good fair is fair
There’s too much nature pressing against the window as if it were a green night and the river swirling in glazed turbulence is less friendly than ever before 40 years ago she called home come home it’s supper time I was fishing a fishless cattle pond with a new three
Dollar pole dreaming the dark blue ocean of pictures in the barn I threw down hay while my sweet Grandpa finished milking squirting the barn cat’s mouth with an utter I kissed the wet nose of my favorite cow drank a Dipper of freshw milk and carried two pales to the house scraping
The manure off my feet in the pump shed she poured the milk in the cream separator and I began cranking at supper the oil cloth was decorated with worn pink roses we ate cold Herring and the blue gills we’ caught at daylight the fly strip above
The table idled in the windows Breeze a new fly and its death Buzz grandpa said we are all flies that’s what he said 40 years ago this poem uh the next one cabin poem was written after he got um a cabin in the upper peninsula and he’d go out to the um Dune
Saloon most nights when he was up there in Grand Murray Michigan and in fact sometimes we dance he was a very good dancer this is shocking but it’s true um part one the blonde girl with a POA heart Poca heart one foot then another then Aral and a twisting jump chin
Upward with a scream of such splunder I go back to my cabin and start a fire two art and life drunk and sober empty and full guilt and Grace cabin and Home North and South struggle and peace after which we catch a glimpse of stars the white glistening Pelt of the Milky Way
Hear the startled bear crashing through the Delta swamp below me in these troubled times I go inside and start a fire three I am the bird that hears the worm or my cousin said the pulse of a wound that probes to the opposite side I have abandoned alcohol cocaine the news
And outdoor prayer at support systems how can I make a case how can you make a case for yourself before an ocean of trees or standing waste deep in the river or sitting in the Log Jam with a pistol I reject Oneness with bears she has two Cubs and think she owns the
Swamp I thought I bought I shoot once in the air to tell her it’s my turn at the Log Jam for an hour’s thought about nothing perhaps that is oness with bears I’ve decided to make my mind up about nothing to assume the water mask to
Finish my life disguised as a creek an Eddy joining at night the full sweet flow to absorb the sky to swallow the heat and cold the moon and the stars to swallow myself in ceaseless flow um and I want to do one uh last late poem
Um that’s sort of about the end of things uh where my parents lived in this uh pretty place in uh Livingston outside of Livingston it’s called galactic sitting out in my chair near Linda’s Garden a mixture of flowers and vegetables pink Iris wild poppies roses Blue Salvia and Veronica among tomatoes
Green beans eggplant and onion I think that I sense the far-flung galaxies and hear a tinge of the solar winds Where is My Dead Brother I want to know with so many infirm IES I await the miraculous galaxies are Grand thickets of stars in which we may hide forever anyway thank you
Everybody for coming and thank you Joseph thank you Todd and Rebecca I can’t wait to hear thanks so much Jamie thank you wow to listen to you read your father’s poems uh very very powerful and uh the brand new Statue of Liberty absolutely one of my favorites uh and in
These uh times uh the true sound of History this metal striking bone comes to my mind all the time um and uh just he you read uh huge honor thank you very much before we um move on to our final live speaker we do have Jim’s voice a
Little later uh in the program I wanted to let everyone know at this point um I am absolutely delighted to say that we have raised about $18,000 toward our goal of $25,000 tonight this is amazing uh if you have yet to donate this evening please look
For those links in the chat use the QR code that’s on the screen uh please visit our website you can do that at 3 in the morning tonight uh please make a donation online and every donation helps secure and Advance Jim’s Legacy as a great American poet uh and every donor
Uh to this Final Phase of the hearts work um every donor is going to receive an emergency poem Wallet card uh and this was inspired by Rebecca solet’s quote from a New York Times art blog I just love this when we found it we were
Just we just like oh my God we have to create this Wallet card H so this is a quote Jim Harrison’s poetry has been hovering pleasantly all summer one poem is now in my wallet for emergency and uh when I emailed Rebecca about that she said yeah that poem I ripped it out
From one of copper Canyon’s cataloges and I just thought what a beautiful thing you know coer Canyon puts poems in cataloges sends them out into the world Rebecca snet rips it out puts it in her wallet just in case I love that idea so thank you very much Rebecca for that
Idea and uh speaking of Rebecca solnet um our final guest before hearing Jim read his poems is in fact Rebecca soulman uh she’s writing the introduction to the new edition of theory and practice of rivers um when we first invited Rebecca to write her intro uh the email we received in reply this
Is I think the best subject line I’ve ever had in an email this was the subject line as it happens I love that Jim Harrison book a lot Rebecca solnet is the author of more than 20 books on feminism Western and urban history popular power social change Insurrection laundering and
Walking hope and catastrophe her books include Orwell’s roses Recollections of my non-existence and the um powerful Book Men explain things to me uh it is an honor to have Rebecca with us this evening Rebecca please thank you so much I am honored to be here many years ago I was invited to
Read with the poets at the Bay Area Watershed poetry festival and the first thought that’s sprang into my mind on bidden was I’ve been promoted which is kind of how i rate poetry in the ranks of literature so and um I thought I would start with a poem on relatively early
One the first section of natural world that like so many of Jim Harrison’s poems invites us to disorient ourselves lose our sense of scale in the world or move through time at a different pace fast or slow but natural world the Earth is almost round the seas
Are curved and hug the Earth both ends are crowned with ice the great blue whale swims near this ice his heart is warm and weighs 2,000 lb his tongue weighs twice as much he weighs 150 tons there are so few of him left he often can’t find a mate he drags his
Six-foot sex through icy waters flukes spread crashing his brain is large enough for a man to sleep in so I’m talking to you on the unseated territory of the Coast Miwok um the land that I grew up on on my northern part of uh it I drank mostly out of the Russian
River all through my childhood uh which is over there on Pomo territory but as an adult I mostly live on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge on the unseated territory of the ram Shalon where mostly drink water from the talami Watershed uh in hchi one of the things a
Lot of San franciscans don’t know is every godamn cup of coffee and you know glass of lemon we have that with water that comes out of the faucet used to be snow melt um sometime earlier that year or whenever it entered the reservoirs and the river which is just to
Say all of us are somewhere between 60 and 80% water most for a lot of us it comes from Rivers um so as a reasonably sentient water container I greet all you fellow water containers here to think about the flow of language and and the theory and
Practice of rivers which really is a book I love this is my copy it’s probably been to every state in the southwest I’ve had it a long time bought it in a used bookstore when I was probably still pretty poor and uh Todd read a quote from one of Jim Harrison’s
Interviews I’m not on a first name basis with him yet but I want to read it again because it’s so germine to what I want to say too he wrote or rather he said I think in the Paris review interview in a life properly lived you’re a river you
Touch things lightly or deeply you move along because life herself moves and you can’t stop it you can’t figure out a bol game applicable applicable to all situations you just have to go with the beingness of life as RKA would have it in Sundog Stang says a dam doesn’t stop
A river it just controls the flow technically speaking you can’t stop one at all and I love that uh the beingness which reminds me that he was such a deep de devotee of Zen budism and the dam reminds me of his early novel I think Ed Abby ripped off where uh four
Young conspirators conspire to blow up a dam and uh on the Colorado River and uh let the river Go free and uh so Jim Harrison had a generous spirit a great love of place and a gift for commenting um for connecting things intended to be far apart an incredible
Vividness in his work which is really striking to me I write Pros but I go to poetry for joy and pleasure and because it always reminds me that language doesn’t have to just sort of trudge along dutifully going one step at a time it can leap it can fly it can lie down
And dream it can move uh it in ways that are not so linear and rational so I always feel like poetry invites me to do better more interesting things with my own language even if it comes in paragraphs instead of stanzas or couplets or poetic forms and I think of
Tracy K Smith who recently said but poetry which awakens our senses frees us from the tyranny of literal meaning and assures us of the credible reality of emotional truth puts us in touch with something bigger than language something I believe each of us was perhaps fluent in before the moment when language
Became our chief vehicle for meaning she continues I’m operating on the belief that poetry can restore me to the large original Self I haven’t yet learned to fully recognize which I think is such a good description of what Jim Harrison does invite us at least to restore ourselves to this large unruly Reckless
Passionate irrational um deeply sensing sensory embodied but also deeply spiritual because the most sensual and the most spiritual are not always so far apart it’s that kind of boring social practical stuff in the middle that we get stuck in I think also of uh the great poet and
Great poet of water Natalie Diaz who said I mean River as a verb a happening it is moving within me right now she talks about how in her own people’s language in Mojave um people and water are not so separate and so I might end up using this in introduction but when I
Was just trying to think about the theory and practice of rivers that great 20page poem in the collected works which looks like a river itself it’s short lines and it goes on and on and on I want to print it out and glue it all together so I’ll have something that’ll
Probably be about 15 15 ft long and you know 2 in wide and have the river of poetry it is so I want to approach this project with two proposals one is that we are all rivers and everything is a river and the other one is that Rivers
Don’t exist if you’re familiar with Zen Buddhism you’re probably pretty familiar and comfortable with Paradox um but I will try and unpack that Paradox a little bit to say that a river me while I flutter some pages around um two-sided printer at this place I’m staying at
Which I’m not used to so because but I want to just talk a little bit about what a river is it’s not a body of water because the water in it is constantly entering and exiting the river bed it’s not the bed itself it’s not just the flow and but
You know snow melt water from from Creeks from smaller bodies smaller mov moving bodies of water from Spring snow melt um you know sometimes out from Lakes goes into the river and doesn’t stay there it evaporates it goes out into other bodies of water here in California our 17 Great Rivers all flow
Into San Francisco Bay a colossal Watershed on their way to the Pacific and um so you know so I once spent three days trying to find the exact location with the two photographers I worked with on a book about yed Mark clet and Byron wolf three days looking for where Edward mybridge
Took a picture of the mered river in 1872 we assumed it was someplace on the river banks as we found them and wandered back and forth on them it took the guys who are so much better at this um than me to figure out that the river
Was not where it had been in 1872 because even a riverbed is not a stable thing any more than the water in it so Rivers don’t exist because everything in them there’s transitory changing no part of the river is the whole river the river is not and the
River is not just the sum of its parts in a sense a river is what a human being is a verb in drag as a noun pretending to be solid self-contained coherent independent while the world streams in and out and through Us and Them we say
Not or Mississippi or I you know um mosa and tus in Northern British Columbia are you know as though a river is a thing an object like a fork or you know a block but it’s this flow and in a sense as I mentioned so are we so in language in
This language of ours that loves its compartments so well a river is treated as a noun and a n noun seem to describe a dis discret object but nothing is really a discret object everything is coming and going and morphing and changing we say an
Object is here when we mean a system a process a gathering of forces or elements is happening a river is something else or many things or as Natalie Diaz points out a verb as much as a noun it’s a place where W Waters gather and flow um where they keep moving and one
Of the things that I think is so to Jim Harrison’s poetry is idea that everything is in motion everything is in flock everything is in transformation which is sorrow and loss and death but also birth things coming towards you things moving away from you the water coming into the river the water coming
Out I found a really nice scientific article from the USDA website that says rivers are truly perceived not as things in space but processes through time because sometimes times you can find scientific literature even in poetry and with that I’m going to read a poem
Or two and try not to take up more than my allotted time and continue with your questions and um which we might not have answers to which is all good because RKA reminded us to love the questions more so River one by Jim Harrison I was there in a room in a V
Village By The River when the Moon fell in when the Moon fell into the window frame and was trapped there too long I was fearful but I was upside down and my prayers fell off the ceiling our small our small dog jacqu jumped on the sofa near the window perched on the
Sofa’s back and released the moon to head south just after Dawn standing in the Green Yard I watched a girl ride down the far side of the railroad tracks on a beautious white horse whose lower legs were wrapped in red tape above her head were mountains covered with snow I
Decided we were born to be moving water not ice and one more and then I’ll hand it back to Joe debtors a late poem they used to say we’re living on borrowed time but even when young I wondered who loaned it to us in 1948 one Grandpa died stretch tight in a misty
Oxygen tent his four Sons gathered his papery hand grasping mine only a week before we were fishing now the four sons have all run out of borrowed time well I’m alive wondering whom I owe for this indisputable gift of existence of of course time is running
Out it always has been a creek heading east the freight of water with its surprising heaviness following the slant of the land its Destiny what is Lovelier than a creek or rivering Thicket say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us Birds and mosart the Mystery of trees
And water and all living things borrowing time would I still love the creek if I lasted forever thank you everybody such a pleasure and an honor and a little bit of a Rebecca oh my goodness thank you so much um just listening just listening to you talk uh about rivers and Jim’s
Poetry uh I am so delighted that you’re going to be part of this project moving forward and I’m really eager to read that introduction that is going to be fantastic so to close out the evening this morning or this this evening this morning that’s very funny uh two
Opposites meeting right there in the middle um to close out um we are going to share some archival recordings of Jim reading four of his poems uh and this is essentially a world premiere um to set the stage um this recording took place in Seattle uh back in October uh of
October 2000 uh Jim was in Seattle for a benefit reading for Copper Canyon press uh Jim was always always generous with us um from the very first book that we published um he wanted to be here and he wanted to help uh and we adored him for
That um and while he was in town we asked Jim whether he would also be willing to go into the sound studio to record an interview uh and then to record an hour or so of poems uh he agreed uh he said because again coer Cannon was the publisher of his Hearts
Work uh and the most significant problem um for this Arrangement was that Jim was not allowed to smoke in the studio so as the minutes turned into that first hour he was getting increasingly antsy um imagine the scene he’s nibbling uh on this nicotine gum uh
And he was also sipping out of a very small plastic cup a favorite French wine uh a bandol from domain tempier which was a gift from his dear friend Peter Lewis uh if you listen close to this recording uh you can hear the nibbling you can hear the sipping it’s actually
Quite fun uh I was actually there in the studio with Jim uh I was feeding him poems um cuper Canyon at that time we envisioned an audio book of jimm reading uh we still have the dream that what it might happen one of these days um and we wanted to record representative poems
From each of his books um and so tonight we’re going to hear four poems uh from four different books uh the final poem is going to close um with the final poem from the theory and practice of rivers uh called Counting Birds um we’re going to hear at the outset of the recording
Jim calling himself little Jimmy he sort of um he’s got a low tone to his voice so got to be a little sharp to hear that one um and then you can also hear the laughter of the sound engineer uh and then Jim does this very eccentric countdown which proves once again
Numbers aren a strong suit uh and also a heads up uh before the last poem uh we included some of the studio chatter um so you get to hear the warmth of Jim’s voice uh and also his infectious and cackling laughter uh please enjoy little Jimmy that’s me
Yeah 10 9 4 7 3 2 0 one anyone that has CH and reads to them and I was getting bored early with our first daughter reading lullaby to her so I wrote a little lullabi during a relatively dark time lullab for a daughter go to sleep night is a cold pit
Full of black water night’s a dark cloud full of warm rain go to sleep night is a flower resting from bees night’s a green sea swall Fallen with fish go to sleep night is a white moon riding her mare night’s a black Sun burn to Black
Cinder go to sleep nights come cats day owl’s day Stars Feast the praise moon to rain over her sweet subject dark I suppose this uh Point started with my obsession with fishing fishing is a tonic antidote to her civilization because it seems like so much one of our basic hunting Gathering
Practices it’s called the drinking song I want to die in the saddle an enemy of civilization I want to walk around in the woods fish and drink I’m going to be a child about it and I can’t help it I was born this way and it makes me very happy to fish and
Drink I left when it was still dark and parked on the path to the river the yellow dog where I spent the day fishing and drinking after she left me and I quit my job and went for a year and all my poems were born dead I decided I would only fish and
Drink water will never leave Earth and whiskey is good for the brain what AM else am I supposed to do in these last days but fish and drink in the river was a trout and I was on the bank my heart and my chest clouds above she was in New York forever and
I fishing and drinking thinking dogen’s dream dogen being the great Zen philosopher from Japan dogen’s dream what happens when the god of spring meets spring he thinks for a moment of great whales traveling from the bottom to to the top of Earth The Day The Voyage begin 7 million years ago when spring
Last changed its season he enters himself emptiness Desiring emptiness he sleeps and his sleep is the dance of all of the birds on Earth flying North okay let not pret counting Birds no we won’t okay do you want to uh go to County birdge right now oh yeah s six 3 8
N that would have made a great counting Birds this is for uh anishi or Native American chipa poet I like a lot Gerald bisner counting birds as a child fres out of the hospital with tape covering the left side of my face I begin to
Count birds at age 50 the sum total is precise and astonishing my only secret some men count women are the cars they’ve own their shirts long sleeve and short sleeve their shoes but I had my birds excluding of course those extraordinary days the 21,000 snow geese and sandill cranes at bosi
Delache the sky blinded by great fig frigate Birds in the Pacific of an conito Ecuador the 21,000 pink pink flamingos at gangor Crater in Tanzania the vast flock of seabirds on the sir coast of the Sea of Cortez D and Sonora that left at nightfall then reappeared resuming their exact
Positions at dawn the 1,000 Cliff swallows nested in the sand Cliffs of pyramid point there small round burs like eyes really The Souls of the anastasi who flew here a thousand years ago to await the coming of the Manu and then there were the usual almost deadly birds of the Soul so the
Crow was so harness I rode one night as if she were black feathered Angel the birds I became to escape unfortunate circumstances how the skin ACH as the the feathers shot out toward light the Thousand Birds the dog help me shoot to become a bird grous wood cut duck Dove
Snip feasant prair Chicken on my deathbed I’ll write the secret number at a slip and pass to my wife and two daughters it will be a hot evening in late June and they might be glancing out the window that the thunderstorms approach from the West looking past her eyes in the fly in
The window screen I wonder if there’s a bird waiting for me in the sun rushing clouds oh Birds I sing to myself you’ve carried me along on this bloody Voyage Carry Me Now into that cloud into the Marvel of this final night I just love that man’s voice I
Love when he’s reading poems and um Marissa if we could put everyone on screen now um that would be fantastic um we only have about 90 seconds left for the event and I just wanted to offer um the floor to anyone if they had any final comments or wanted
To respond Todd I know that you were a while ago and you’ve probably been monitoring the chat and is there if you’d like to say something or respond in any way well I’ll tell you Joseph I was just absolutely thrilled to hear Jim reading those poems uh particularly counting
Birds and um it was it was so nice to hear the warmth and and joy in his voice and uh to hear you and Jim laughing together in the studio uh that was magnificent and I just want to say that uh you know I was dazzled by uh
Rebecca’s uh talk thank you so much and Jamie your reading was incredibly moving um and I’ll just say again I’m so honored to be here with you all tonight thank you for including me Joseph right on anyone else have any final words they would like to share just say the same
And it was great to hear his uh voice before he was Ill you know it was it was wonderful thank you thank you re Becca thank you TD and Rebecca you’re on mute if you’re how did that happen oh there you go wanted to say hang out with almost 500
People who are wild enthusiasts about poetry and set aside their th Thursday evening for it is one of the things that makes me feel good about our species and so thank you everybody it’s been a joy and an honor right well thank you very much and just on that note I would like
To say our species um tonight we’re uh we made over $20,000 toward the production of the book so thank you very much for helping us meet our goal um I really appreciate your uh presence here this evening I encourage you all to become uh part of the hearts workk
Support Jim’s poetry through our Legacy project you can find all sorts of information on our website um there’s a broadside uh of an excerpt from Cabin poem as part of the donor perks um and I really really appreciate your presence here uh please go forth thank you all read some poems especially that
Emergency wallet poem see you thank you yep byebye