What do you think?
Théorie et pratique des rivières
Poetry by noted author Jim Harrison.
- GenresPoetryNonfictionNature
160 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1990
About the author
Jim Harrison
183 books1,552 followersJim Harrison was born in Grayling, Michigan, to Winfield Sprague Harrison, a county agricultural agent, and Norma Olivia (Wahlgren) Harrison, both avid readers. He married Linda King in 1959 with whom he has two daughters.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 68, 69), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969-70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).
Much of Harrison's writing depicts sparsely populated regions of North America with many stories set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona-Mexico border.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 68, 69), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969-70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).
Much of Harrison's writing depicts sparsely populated regions of North America with many stories set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona-Mexico border.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 28, 2016
RIP, Jim Harrison, whose novel, Legends of the Fall, made him nationally known for a time. A writer of the earth, who I discovered, living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was living in the Leelanau Peninsula of the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. I liked his poetry even better than his novels. These poems will reward you for attention, lovely, muscular, unsentimental.
June 17, 2020
I've been reading, and re-reading, Harrison for almost 40 years. Some of his work holds up. Some doesn't. Such are the risks and rewards of a long writing career. The best of Harrison's poetry may long outlast him. In this strong collection, he writes about birds, human yearning, and human foolishness as well as anyone I've read. You just have to roll with his idiosyncratic delight in shifting tone...and you have to suffer his obsessions. I'm fine with that. All artists should be flagrant with their obsessions.
August 29, 2025
perfect book for a weekend in northern michigan. west side king.
“We are our consciousness/ and it is the god in us/ who struggles to be in everyone/ in order to be ourselves.” (Acting)
“We are our consciousness/ and it is the god in us/ who struggles to be in everyone/ in order to be ourselves.” (Acting)
August 12, 2026
The way Harrison writes alludes while gripping something primal. He has reached me in his poetry.
November 16, 2019
Nice edition of a good book of poetry, mostly about the natural world. Much more precise than his novels which I also love.
April 28, 2020
A beautiful collection by a wonderful poet. "The Theory & Practice of Rivers" is a long poem that takes up about half the book and one of Harrison's masterpieces. Highly recommended.
September 24, 2022
Très intéressant.
March 15, 2026
paar van mijn favoriete passages:
THE THEORY & PRACTICE OF RIVERS:
"how the water goes
is how the earth is shaped."
"flute song in soft dark
sound of water over rock,
the moon glitter rippling;
breath caught as my hunched
figure moved in a comic circle,
seven times around the cabin
through the woods in the dark.
why did I decide to frighten myself?"
""my grandfather screwed me
when I was seven years old,"
she said, while I looked out
at the cement river flowing with dusty rain,
at three dogs playing in the cement river.
"he's dead now so there's no point
sweating it," she added."
"and is it terrible to be lonely and ill?
she wrote. "not at all, in fact it is better to be lonely when ill. To others, friends, relatives, loved ones, death is our most interesting, our most dramatic act.
perhaps the best thing i've learned
from these apparently caused and bedraggled
Indians i've studied all these years
is how to die"
"I forgot where I heard that poems
are designed to waken sleeping gods;
in our time they've taken on nearly
unrecognisable shapes as gods will do;"
"gods laugh at the fiction of gender"
HORSE:
"by dawn with eye half-open, I said to myself, is
he still running, is he still running
around, under the ground?"
CABIN POEM:
"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."
COUNTING BIRDS:
"the birds i became to escape unfortunate
circumstances - how the skin ached
as the feathers shot out toward light;
the thousand birds the dogs helped
me shoot to become a bird"
THE THEORY & PRACTICE OF RIVERS:
"how the water goes
is how the earth is shaped."
"flute song in soft dark
sound of water over rock,
the moon glitter rippling;
breath caught as my hunched
figure moved in a comic circle,
seven times around the cabin
through the woods in the dark.
why did I decide to frighten myself?"
""my grandfather screwed me
when I was seven years old,"
she said, while I looked out
at the cement river flowing with dusty rain,
at three dogs playing in the cement river.
"he's dead now so there's no point
sweating it," she added."
"and is it terrible to be lonely and ill?
she wrote. "not at all, in fact it is better to be lonely when ill. To others, friends, relatives, loved ones, death is our most interesting, our most dramatic act.
perhaps the best thing i've learned
from these apparently caused and bedraggled
Indians i've studied all these years
is how to die"
"I forgot where I heard that poems
are designed to waken sleeping gods;
in our time they've taken on nearly
unrecognisable shapes as gods will do;"
"gods laugh at the fiction of gender"
HORSE:
"by dawn with eye half-open, I said to myself, is
he still running, is he still running
around, under the ground?"
CABIN POEM:
"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."
COUNTING BIRDS:
"the birds i became to escape unfortunate
circumstances - how the skin ached
as the feathers shot out toward light;
the thousand birds the dogs helped
me shoot to become a bird"
December 15, 2025
Somehow the first Jim Harrison poetry that I’ve read..and I loved it (no surprise). I really think he accomplishes a lot of what Mary Oliver is praised for but in a more relatable way. I feel so tied up in his descriptions of water and this poem conjured up a lot of similarities to the river in Siddhartha. Lovedd
March 24, 2026
I’ve decided to make up my mind 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.
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.
July 12, 2014
A couple of jewels in here, but many of the poems felt overwrought and too lofty, as if the only goal in the book were to elevate every event, indiscriminately, as holy. Which is fine for journaling, or for treasuring one's experiences... But as a published collection it often felt unaware of an audience, or at least of any audience that differed from the poet himself. Still, a few good ones.
May 31, 2008
Harrison weaves his pragmatic yet tender views on nature through thoughts of loss and helplessness. I love how he does that.
September 9, 2023
My favorite book of poetry—some lines have resonated with me throughout life: “I am not yet alert enough to live”. . . “I am never going to wake up and play the piano.”
May 27, 2025
(This is a reread, in the brand new (2025) edition, part of Copper Canyon Press's "The Heart's Work: Jim Harrison's Poetic Legacy," with a wonderful introduction by Rebecca Solnit, and a holographic reprint of the draft of the long title poem.)
This is a poem that keeps opening up for me, every time I return to it. Harrison kept thinking about things, and kept experiencing the world around him, kept stepping into the river, and what felt a bit easy to me many years ago, I now realize was hard earned, deeply felt. Yes, the lines are simple, mostly unadorned, but they carry something -- ok, I'll call it a resonance -- that brings me into the poem and out of myself. The elegiac parts of this poem were what first moved me (the death of his sixteen year old neice), but now I am grabbed by the places the elegy demands we visit. I could quote almost anywhere, but here are a few lines early on:
The days are stacked against
what we think we are.
After a month of interior weeping
it occurred to me that in times like these
I have nothing to fall back on
exept the sun and moon and earth.
I dress in camouflage and crawl
around swamps and forest, seeing
the bitch coyote five times but never
before she sees me. Her look
is curious, almost a smile.
The days are stacked against
what we think we are.
It is almost impossible
to surprise ourselves.
This is a poem that keeps opening up for me, every time I return to it. Harrison kept thinking about things, and kept experiencing the world around him, kept stepping into the river, and what felt a bit easy to me many years ago, I now realize was hard earned, deeply felt. Yes, the lines are simple, mostly unadorned, but they carry something -- ok, I'll call it a resonance -- that brings me into the poem and out of myself. The elegiac parts of this poem were what first moved me (the death of his sixteen year old neice), but now I am grabbed by the places the elegy demands we visit. I could quote almost anywhere, but here are a few lines early on:
The days are stacked against
what we think we are.
After a month of interior weeping
it occurred to me that in times like these
I have nothing to fall back on
exept the sun and moon and earth.
I dress in camouflage and crawl
around swamps and forest, seeing
the bitch coyote five times but never
before she sees me. Her look
is curious, almost a smile.
The days are stacked against
what we think we are.
It is almost impossible
to surprise ourselves.
April 13, 2026
4.5/5. It is a beautiful thing to discover that Harrison is just as immortal of a poet as he is a novelist. The titular poem is wonderful, a true elegy for his dead niece interlaced with his timeless musings on nature, life, solitude, and the interwoven essence of all things. The idea that we are all a river - that to live clearly and well we must shed our perceived permanence of the self and inundate ourselves into the world and one another - resonated with my heart and core. There was a lovely balance of poems here, featuring both reflections on his life and half-realised memories of his youth as well as almost fantastical writings on the peoples of America and animals. Harrison loses none of his wisdom nor wit when converting from prose to verse. Certainly I look forward to enjoying more of his poetry as well as his fictional writings.
'So that: when you wake in the night, the freedom of the nightmare turned to dream follows you into morning, and there is no skin on earth you cannot enter, no beast or plant, no man or woman you may not flow through and become.'
'So that: when you wake in the night, the freedom of the nightmare turned to dream follows you into morning, and there is no skin on earth you cannot enter, no beast or plant, no man or woman you may not flow through and become.'
May 3, 2025
The days are finally stacked
against what we think we are:
how long can I stare at the river?
Three months in a row now
with no signs of stopping,
glancing to the right, an almost
embarrassed feeling that the river
will stop flowing and I can go home.
The days, at last, are stacked against
what we think we are.
Who in their most hallowed, sleepless
night with the moon seven feet
outside the window, the moon
that the river swallows, would wish
it otherwise?
against what we think we are:
how long can I stare at the river?
Three months in a row now
with no signs of stopping,
glancing to the right, an almost
embarrassed feeling that the river
will stop flowing and I can go home.
The days, at last, are stacked against
what we think we are.
Who in their most hallowed, sleepless
night with the moon seven feet
outside the window, the moon
that the river swallows, would wish
it otherwise?
June 23, 2025
“I warned myself all night
but then halfway between my ears
I turned toward the heavens
and reached the top of my head.
From there I can go just about
anywhere I want and I’ve never
found my way back home.”
but then halfway between my ears
I turned toward the heavens
and reached the top of my head.
From there I can go just about
anywhere I want and I’ve never
found my way back home.”
June 27, 2025
Poetry.
Reading these poems was like hanging out with Tom Waits for an afternoon. And I love Tom Waits!
A sort of beatnik-like wandering through the world with lots of killer phrases.
Reading these poems was like hanging out with Tom Waits for an afternoon. And I love Tom Waits!
A sort of beatnik-like wandering through the world with lots of killer phrases.
September 26, 2025
en plus d’avoir un des plus beaux titres au monde, ce livre prouve (mais le fallait-il encore?) que jim harrison est un grand poète
November 25, 2025
4.5 Stars
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews