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Dead Man's Float
"Harrison's poems succeed on the basis of an open heart and a still-ravenous appetite for life."— The Texas Observer The title Dead Man's Float is inspired by a technique used by swimmers to conserve energy when exhausted, to rest up for the long swim to shore. In his fourteenth volume of poetry, Jim Harrison presents keen awareness of physical pains, delights in the natural world, and reflects on humanity's tentative place in a universe filled with ninety billion galaxies. By turns mournful and celebratory, these fearless and exuberant poems accomplish what Harrison's poems always wake us up to the possibilities of being fully alive. "Forthright and unaffected, even brash, Harrison always scoops us straight into the world whether writing fiction or nonfiction. This new collection [ Dead Man's Float ] takes its cue from a technique swimmers use to conserve energy in deep water, and Harrison goes in deep, acknowledging our frailness even as he seamlessly connects with a world that moves from water to air to the sky beyond."— Library Journal “Harrison pours himself into everything he writes… in poems, you do meet Harrison head-on. As he navigates his seventies, he continues to marvel with succinct awe and earthy lyricism over the wonders of birds, dogs, and stars as he pays haunting homage to his dead and contends with age’s assaults. The sagely mischievous poet of the North Woods and the Arizona desert laughs at himself as he tries to relax by imagining that he’s doing the dead man’s float only to sink into troubling memories…Bracingly candid, gracefully elegiac, tough, and passionate, Harrison travels the deep river of the spirit, from the wailing precincts of a hospital to a “green glade of soft marsh grass near a pool in a creek” to the moon-bright sea.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist "Harrison doesn't write like anyone else, relying entirely on the toughness of his vision and intensity of feeling."— Publishers Weekly Warbler This year we have two gorgeous
yellow warblers nesting in the honeysuckle bush.
The other day I stuck my head in the bush.
The nestlings weigh one twentieth of an ounce,
about the size of a honeybee. We stared at
each other, startled by our existence.
In a month or so, when they reach the size
of bumblebees they'll fly to Costa Rica without a map. Jim Harrison , one of America's most versatile and celebrated writers, is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction—including Legends of the Fall , the acclaimed trilogy of novellas. With a fondness for open space and anonymous thickets, he divides his time between Montana and southern Arizona.
yellow warblers nesting in the honeysuckle bush.
The other day I stuck my head in the bush.
The nestlings weigh one twentieth of an ounce,
about the size of a honeybee. We stared at
each other, startled by our existence.
In a month or so, when they reach the size
of bumblebees they'll fly to Costa Rica without a map. Jim Harrison , one of America's most versatile and celebrated writers, is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction—including Legends of the Fall , the acclaimed trilogy of novellas. With a fondness for open space and anonymous thickets, he divides his time between Montana and southern Arizona.
156 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 13, 2015
31 people are currently reading
537 people want to read
About the author
Jim Harrison
185 books1,487 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
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
May 24, 2021
"Conversing with the poet-novelist is somehow akin to watching his dogs work the cover for birds. They race off on tangents, describing broad loops and arcs, or tight circles, always returning in a controlled, if circuitous, pattern that is at once instinct, training, ritual, and play.
Harrison is a man of prodigious memory and free-wheeling brilliance and erudition, as well as great spirit and generosity, lightness and humor; so the reader should imagine wild giggles and laughter throughout, and supply them even when they seem inappropriate—especially when they seem inappropriate. Imagine, too, the sounds and the textures in the background of the tapes: the easy talk of friends and hunting cronies; the light, cold drizzle of the wettest fall in Michigan history; sodden leaves and branches underfoot; and always the ringing of the dogs’ bells, sometimes nearby, sometimes barely discernible, fading into the woods."
Jim Fergus, The Paris Review
"It’s the origin of the thinking behind The Theory and Practice of Rivers. 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 banal game plan applicable to all situations; you just have to go with the “beingness” of life, as Rilke would have it. In Sundog, Strang says a dam doesn’t stop a river, it just controls the flow. Technically speaking, you can’t stop one at all."
Jim Harrison, The Paris Review
When I heard of Jim Harrison's passing last Saturday, my heart broke in a million pieces. I broke down in tears in front of my mother-in-law who probably thought that I was downright crazy. Some people will never be able to understand how you can sustain an imaginary conversation with a writer for half your life and consider them your family. Jim Harrison was one of those writers for me.
Above my writing desk in Canada, I had four photographs of writers pinned under glass like butterflies: Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Richard Ford and Jim Harrison. I talk to them when I'm distraught. I sit with them in Adirondack chairs at dusk and watch rivers go by in the roaring silence. I ask myself what they would do in certain situations. I stare at their faces as if they contain all the secrets of the universe, but mostly of a life well-lived, my elusive holy grail.
I cannot think of anyone whose appetite - his celebratory and constantly renewed hunger for life is legendary - is more contagious and more exquisite than Jim Harrison's. The joy he finds in the world, in the wilderness, in birds, in a dog's personality, in movement, in the passing of seasons, in the bodies of women, in the company of dead poets, in tree logs, in fly-fishing, heats up your heart like a floating sun.
The poems in Dead Man's Float are full of mortality and aging and grief and melancholy and yet you won't find more life and vigor and tenacity and attentiveness in any other book you've read recently. Jim Harrison talks to his own beloved poets (Garcia Lorca, Mandelstam, Rimbaud) the way he has his entire life and ends the book sitting with Machado at the edge of a suspended bridge above the sea. This poem both floored me and filled my heart with an animal pulse.
Bridge
by Jim Harrison
Most of my life was spent
building a bridge out over the sea
but the sea was too wide and it didn't
go anyplace. I'm proud of the bridge
hanging in the pure sea air. Machado
came for a visit and we sat on the
end of the bridge which was his idea.
Now that I'm old the work goes slowly
but the material keeps coming as I hang
here in the air. Ever nearer death I like
it out here high above the sea bundled
up for the arctic storms of late fall,
the resounding crash and moan of the sea,
the hundred foot depth of the green troughs.
Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
which imitates the sky's thunder
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies.
So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above
the abyss, the fatal plummet. Tonight the moon
will be in my lap. This is my job, to study
the universe from my bridge. I have the sky, the sea,
the faint green streak of Canadian forest on the far shore.
Now go and read him.
Harrison is a man of prodigious memory and free-wheeling brilliance and erudition, as well as great spirit and generosity, lightness and humor; so the reader should imagine wild giggles and laughter throughout, and supply them even when they seem inappropriate—especially when they seem inappropriate. Imagine, too, the sounds and the textures in the background of the tapes: the easy talk of friends and hunting cronies; the light, cold drizzle of the wettest fall in Michigan history; sodden leaves and branches underfoot; and always the ringing of the dogs’ bells, sometimes nearby, sometimes barely discernible, fading into the woods."
Jim Fergus, The Paris Review
"It’s the origin of the thinking behind The Theory and Practice of Rivers. 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 banal game plan applicable to all situations; you just have to go with the “beingness” of life, as Rilke would have it. In Sundog, Strang says a dam doesn’t stop a river, it just controls the flow. Technically speaking, you can’t stop one at all."
Jim Harrison, The Paris Review
When I heard of Jim Harrison's passing last Saturday, my heart broke in a million pieces. I broke down in tears in front of my mother-in-law who probably thought that I was downright crazy. Some people will never be able to understand how you can sustain an imaginary conversation with a writer for half your life and consider them your family. Jim Harrison was one of those writers for me.
Above my writing desk in Canada, I had four photographs of writers pinned under glass like butterflies: Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Richard Ford and Jim Harrison. I talk to them when I'm distraught. I sit with them in Adirondack chairs at dusk and watch rivers go by in the roaring silence. I ask myself what they would do in certain situations. I stare at their faces as if they contain all the secrets of the universe, but mostly of a life well-lived, my elusive holy grail.
I cannot think of anyone whose appetite - his celebratory and constantly renewed hunger for life is legendary - is more contagious and more exquisite than Jim Harrison's. The joy he finds in the world, in the wilderness, in birds, in a dog's personality, in movement, in the passing of seasons, in the bodies of women, in the company of dead poets, in tree logs, in fly-fishing, heats up your heart like a floating sun.
The poems in Dead Man's Float are full of mortality and aging and grief and melancholy and yet you won't find more life and vigor and tenacity and attentiveness in any other book you've read recently. Jim Harrison talks to his own beloved poets (Garcia Lorca, Mandelstam, Rimbaud) the way he has his entire life and ends the book sitting with Machado at the edge of a suspended bridge above the sea. This poem both floored me and filled my heart with an animal pulse.
Bridge
by Jim Harrison
Most of my life was spent
building a bridge out over the sea
but the sea was too wide and it didn't
go anyplace. I'm proud of the bridge
hanging in the pure sea air. Machado
came for a visit and we sat on the
end of the bridge which was his idea.
Now that I'm old the work goes slowly
but the material keeps coming as I hang
here in the air. Ever nearer death I like
it out here high above the sea bundled
up for the arctic storms of late fall,
the resounding crash and moan of the sea,
the hundred foot depth of the green troughs.
Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
which imitates the sky's thunder
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies.
So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above
the abyss, the fatal plummet. Tonight the moon
will be in my lap. This is my job, to study
the universe from my bridge. I have the sky, the sea,
the faint green streak of Canadian forest on the far shore.
Now go and read him.
March 25, 2021
'At my age you don't think about the future because you don't have one.' And with this book, his last, it was fait accompli. The back cover photo shows it "Buzzard" an' all. More reason this cut-to-bone collection that recapitulates the penultimate loves of nature in forms of birds, birddogs, rivers and estuaries, apple trees, April, killed and/or avoided snakes and enduring love for Lorca. He yearns a nymphet still and always, lush of maidenhood, Moonbeams and fish rises. I called him the 'Buzzard King' a slough of review books back; I'm doin' it again. These poems road kill!
March 26, 2017
Gritty and gorgeous poetry. This collection was published just months before Jim Harrison's death, and it's a moving portrayal of the tail end of a life. Each poem paints a vivid picture - just a handful of words capture an experience of hard living, of liquor and women, of favorite dogs, of the desert landscape, of dreaming about the hereafter. It's a bit like watching found footage of someone's last moments on earth, a bit like listening to a ghost.
December 3, 2023
(4/5)
Harrison liked birds.
These poems were great. Some better than others, some phenomenal, some not so good. I liked the collection though.
It’s hard to rate poetry (as any viewer of Dead Poets Society would know) so I’ll just give it 4 stars and move on. You can’t do justice to poetry by rating it.
Just go read it yourself. That’s all I can offer in terms of a rating.
Harrison liked birds.
These poems were great. Some better than others, some phenomenal, some not so good. I liked the collection though.
It’s hard to rate poetry (as any viewer of Dead Poets Society would know) so I’ll just give it 4 stars and move on. You can’t do justice to poetry by rating it.
Just go read it yourself. That’s all I can offer in terms of a rating.
February 19, 2017
Jim Harrison’s final collection of poetry, Dead Man’s Float, seems to have been written in the full knowledge that he did not have much longer to live. Approaching age 80, the poet sings of death and birds. The opening poem is our vade mecum:
“Where Is Jim Harrison?”
He fell off the cliff of a seven-inch zafu.
He couldn’t get up because of his surgery.
He believes in the Resurrection mostly
because he was never taught how not to.
The poems that follow will deal with these themes—falling, Eastern concepts, surgery, hospitals, the possibility of an afterlife, and what he was and was not taught. He (or his narrator) was certainly taught to observe the dead and the earlier poems in the book are filled with images of his own death and dying as he sings a “bedsore cantata” while being “endlessly sacrifices at the medical gizmo altar.” His “spine aches from top to bottom” and his “shingles burn, a special punishment”. “The old bugaboo of depression” is there along with the sound of cellos. “I wanted to be a cello. I hear cellos when I’m trout fishing.”
But in the midst of death life can come rushing in:
“Time rushes toward me—
it has no brakes. Still
the radishes are good this year.
run them through butter,
Add a little salt”
It is a burden to know that one has no clear expiration date, but that it must be rushing at one. The poet notices dead bodies of animals and thinks about dead people: “I pray for Mandelstam hiding / covered with snow in a ditch.” “Elsa’s head torn off / and her eyes stayed open….She was a find gardener with a sweet, / warm voice.” “Molly was the bravest…one day / her body was found down by the weir.” “A cow is screaming across the arroyo….Next morning she’s dead, / already smelling badly in the heat.” “so many American Indians freeze / walking home from bars on the reservation edge. / A friend died learning and dozing against / his mailbox, so near home.”
The poems are sometimes unpoetical little stories about death, corpses, illness, and old age. While I realize that this review is not likely to win Harrison new readers, I think that would be wrong. Harrison speaks honestly to his life. He has a great book of essays forthcoming called A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand.
This book of poems, however, is a serious guide to the life of the elderly. The second part of the book triumphantly returns (mostly) to life and especially to birds and flowers. In “Tiny Bird” Harrison write “Birds are poems I haven’t caught yet”. He’s a part of the poetic tradition of paying homage to the artistry of birds and bird songs. He praises the “two gorgeous / yellow warblers nesting in the honeysuckle bush….In a month or so, when the reach the size / of bumblebees they’ll fly to Costa Rica without a map.”
This book is not an easy book to read in many ways but it’s a necessary one for those who are wondering about death: when and why it comes. It offers no reassurance of an afterlife but acknowledges the possibility. If we are lucky, we will become old enough to embrace these poems with their wisdom. Without ever once becoming didactic, Harrison offers us lessons in what to see and what to watch and what to think about as we age into the sometimes crotchety, sometimes genial, characters we will become as we leave this world.
“Where Is Jim Harrison?”
He fell off the cliff of a seven-inch zafu.
He couldn’t get up because of his surgery.
He believes in the Resurrection mostly
because he was never taught how not to.
The poems that follow will deal with these themes—falling, Eastern concepts, surgery, hospitals, the possibility of an afterlife, and what he was and was not taught. He (or his narrator) was certainly taught to observe the dead and the earlier poems in the book are filled with images of his own death and dying as he sings a “bedsore cantata” while being “endlessly sacrifices at the medical gizmo altar.” His “spine aches from top to bottom” and his “shingles burn, a special punishment”. “The old bugaboo of depression” is there along with the sound of cellos. “I wanted to be a cello. I hear cellos when I’m trout fishing.”
But in the midst of death life can come rushing in:
“Time rushes toward me—
it has no brakes. Still
the radishes are good this year.
run them through butter,
Add a little salt”
It is a burden to know that one has no clear expiration date, but that it must be rushing at one. The poet notices dead bodies of animals and thinks about dead people: “I pray for Mandelstam hiding / covered with snow in a ditch.” “Elsa’s head torn off / and her eyes stayed open….She was a find gardener with a sweet, / warm voice.” “Molly was the bravest…one day / her body was found down by the weir.” “A cow is screaming across the arroyo….Next morning she’s dead, / already smelling badly in the heat.” “so many American Indians freeze / walking home from bars on the reservation edge. / A friend died learning and dozing against / his mailbox, so near home.”
The poems are sometimes unpoetical little stories about death, corpses, illness, and old age. While I realize that this review is not likely to win Harrison new readers, I think that would be wrong. Harrison speaks honestly to his life. He has a great book of essays forthcoming called A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand.
This book of poems, however, is a serious guide to the life of the elderly. The second part of the book triumphantly returns (mostly) to life and especially to birds and flowers. In “Tiny Bird” Harrison write “Birds are poems I haven’t caught yet”. He’s a part of the poetic tradition of paying homage to the artistry of birds and bird songs. He praises the “two gorgeous / yellow warblers nesting in the honeysuckle bush….In a month or so, when the reach the size / of bumblebees they’ll fly to Costa Rica without a map.”
This book is not an easy book to read in many ways but it’s a necessary one for those who are wondering about death: when and why it comes. It offers no reassurance of an afterlife but acknowledges the possibility. If we are lucky, we will become old enough to embrace these poems with their wisdom. Without ever once becoming didactic, Harrison offers us lessons in what to see and what to watch and what to think about as we age into the sometimes crotchety, sometimes genial, characters we will become as we leave this world.
April 19, 2016
I was late to the "Jim Harrison" party, and for that I'll always be regretful and embarrassed. However, the beauty of literature is that even when the authors are gone (Harrison died the day before Easter in 2016), their work and legacy will remain. And what a legacy Harrison seems to have left us.
I'm a poet and I'm drawn to poetry, but I'm also pulled by solid fiction. I'm pulled by honest and truthful prose, artful blemishes left behind until what remains is a purified section of prose that can hit you with the hardest punch. Harrison, like Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, had that elegant ability. He carved away the fluff with a literary knife.
"Dead Man's Float", Harrison's final book and my introduction to his writing (aside from watching Legends of the Fall throughout the years and being regretfully ignorant of its original source), has elbowed its way quickly into the small selection of my favorite books of all time. Few collections of poetry have embedded themselves in my mind and my own creativity such as this one.
My new favorite poem, of all poems written since the beginning of time, is "Zona" from this collection. In a simple seven lines, Harrison confirmed that it's not the amount of words that a writer pours into a thought in order to deeply affect someone. It's the talent for making sure that the words that you do include are perfect in their simplicity and impact. In "Zona" Harrison sets up the familiar themes of aging, looming work, and the unstoppable magnitude of time, but then quickly he focuses in on a simple silver lining; in this case that the radishes are good this year and how to best prepare them for eating. Harrison's poems and prose in this collection are all comprised of this style. I only have shown my favorite example of them.
It's a sign of a talented poet when in seven lines we are shown the largest and unavoidable themes of life and death and then suddenly forced into a simple quaint observation of a diminutive feature of the world, that something as simple as radish can have the enormity of one's body decaying in the epilogue of life. Harrison was such a poet.
You will be missed, sir, but what a legacy you've left us.
I'm a poet and I'm drawn to poetry, but I'm also pulled by solid fiction. I'm pulled by honest and truthful prose, artful blemishes left behind until what remains is a purified section of prose that can hit you with the hardest punch. Harrison, like Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, had that elegant ability. He carved away the fluff with a literary knife.
"Dead Man's Float", Harrison's final book and my introduction to his writing (aside from watching Legends of the Fall throughout the years and being regretfully ignorant of its original source), has elbowed its way quickly into the small selection of my favorite books of all time. Few collections of poetry have embedded themselves in my mind and my own creativity such as this one.
My new favorite poem, of all poems written since the beginning of time, is "Zona" from this collection. In a simple seven lines, Harrison confirmed that it's not the amount of words that a writer pours into a thought in order to deeply affect someone. It's the talent for making sure that the words that you do include are perfect in their simplicity and impact. In "Zona" Harrison sets up the familiar themes of aging, looming work, and the unstoppable magnitude of time, but then quickly he focuses in on a simple silver lining; in this case that the radishes are good this year and how to best prepare them for eating. Harrison's poems and prose in this collection are all comprised of this style. I only have shown my favorite example of them.
It's a sign of a talented poet when in seven lines we are shown the largest and unavoidable themes of life and death and then suddenly forced into a simple quaint observation of a diminutive feature of the world, that something as simple as radish can have the enormity of one's body decaying in the epilogue of life. Harrison was such a poet.
You will be missed, sir, but what a legacy you've left us.
September 17, 2016
Junk Pile
God throws us out the back door
onto a huge junk pile in another
galaxy. There are billions of bodies.
It’s 1,000 degrees below
zero but compacted souls don’t need heat.
It’s logical because we
came in the front door. All of us die
in the caboose not of our choosing
but then we’ve always seen life
disappearing behind us, most always
into what we clumsily call the past.
Most of the girls I loved are now crones
with me a geezer, shuffling toward the moon.
So many years ago the girl with brown legs
in the green dress got off the yellow school bus.
Sometimes the past flips over and determines
what we are today. The girl’s sandy
feet were on the dashboard. Beneath, thighs
were speaking the language of thighs.
Godspeed is the speed of light.
Dead Man’s Float
Dr. Guevara said that I’m hollow-eyed
and exhausted from writing too much.
I should take a break but I don’t know how.
Suddenly I remembered learning
the “dead man’s float” in Boy Scout
swimming lessons and a light went off.
That’s what I’ll do to rest up,
the dead man’s float without water.
I got in bed and conjured the feeling
of floating and recalled my last
dead man’s float about a mile
out in the ocean east of Key West
when I tired from too much swimming ambition.
Big waves kept drowning my nose.
I gave up floating and swam desperately to shore.
I dozed in the hot sand and a pretty girl
stopped and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’ll never be okay,” I said, and she left.
I saw her later but she wouldn’t talk
to this goofy. A poet blows a chance with
a dumb witticism.
If you need me now
I’m here along the Mexican border
dead-man floating.
God throws us out the back door
onto a huge junk pile in another
galaxy. There are billions of bodies.
It’s 1,000 degrees below
zero but compacted souls don’t need heat.
It’s logical because we
came in the front door. All of us die
in the caboose not of our choosing
but then we’ve always seen life
disappearing behind us, most always
into what we clumsily call the past.
Most of the girls I loved are now crones
with me a geezer, shuffling toward the moon.
So many years ago the girl with brown legs
in the green dress got off the yellow school bus.
Sometimes the past flips over and determines
what we are today. The girl’s sandy
feet were on the dashboard. Beneath, thighs
were speaking the language of thighs.
Godspeed is the speed of light.
Dead Man’s Float
Dr. Guevara said that I’m hollow-eyed
and exhausted from writing too much.
I should take a break but I don’t know how.
Suddenly I remembered learning
the “dead man’s float” in Boy Scout
swimming lessons and a light went off.
That’s what I’ll do to rest up,
the dead man’s float without water.
I got in bed and conjured the feeling
of floating and recalled my last
dead man’s float about a mile
out in the ocean east of Key West
when I tired from too much swimming ambition.
Big waves kept drowning my nose.
I gave up floating and swam desperately to shore.
I dozed in the hot sand and a pretty girl
stopped and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’ll never be okay,” I said, and she left.
I saw her later but she wouldn’t talk
to this goofy. A poet blows a chance with
a dumb witticism.
If you need me now
I’m here along the Mexican border
dead-man floating.
January 8, 2016
Dead Man's Float
by Harrison, Jim
These are poems of a man reflecting on his collection of decades, his single thread of story weaving through relationships and places. Harrison’s writing is not restrained. He gifts us his words which are our words, but we usually hold them back and don’t say them, thinking of a softer way to say it. Yet, deep within, we’re thinking the same thing. Harrison doesn’t do that. This makes his writing the voice of an unrestrained human — the voice of a free man.
I might borrow his word for when people ask him what he does. “I’m a log sitter.” I like that. My father would like that.
by Harrison, Jim
These are poems of a man reflecting on his collection of decades, his single thread of story weaving through relationships and places. Harrison’s writing is not restrained. He gifts us his words which are our words, but we usually hold them back and don’t say them, thinking of a softer way to say it. Yet, deep within, we’re thinking the same thing. Harrison doesn’t do that. This makes his writing the voice of an unrestrained human — the voice of a free man.
I might borrow his word for when people ask him what he does. “I’m a log sitter.” I like that. My father would like that.
January 21, 2018
Jim Harrison is at a point in his life that in addition to his usual subjects, he writes about unrelenting physical pain and frustration, which, for me, gave even more depth to his poems.... The authors photo on the back of the dustcover is in itself worth the price of the book. a big thank you to Jim harrison.
another reviewer on this site describe Jim Harrison as, "a unrestrained human voice". I find that to be a apt description.
another reviewer on this site describe Jim Harrison as, "a unrestrained human voice". I find that to be a apt description.
November 6, 2017
Dead Man's Float by Jim Harrison. Excellent collection.
The subjects of many of these are other poets. Lorca and fellow Spaniard, Machado, make repeat visits; also Mandalstam (Russian), and Rumi (13th C., Persian).
And, as with Braided Creek (see below), many are about aging, about death, about birds. In two poems, in fact, he witnesses an unlikely sight, the moment of death of two birds, from natural causes:
Meanwhile, seventy-four years of birds
have passed. Most have died of course
so I shouldn't complain about the nearing
end of it all. I once saw a bird fall out
of a tree stone dead. I nudged it surprised
at its feather lightness that allowed it to fly.
I buried it in earth where they don't belong
any more than we do. Dead birds should be
monuments suspended forever in the air.
(from 'Seventy-four').
And here, from 'Solstice Litany'),
A very old robin drops dead
on the lawn, a first for me. Millions
of birds die but we never see it--they like
privacy in this holy, fatal moment or so
I think. We can't tell each other when we die.
Others must carry the message to and fro.
"He's gone," they'll say. While writing an average poem
destined to disappear among the millions of poems
written now by mortally average poets.
A few other notable lines:
Birds are poems I haven't caught yet.
——-
As an artist
you follow the girl in the white tennis dress
for 25,000 miles and never close the deal.
———-
Nature gets bruised, injured,
murdered in bed
———-
Some gods have been dead
a thousand years and need our magic
and music to bring them back to life.
We owe it to them. They got us started.
——-
It's up to poets to retrieve the gods.
———
From a distance the head is a bowling ball on the shoulders, but not so: a carapace and inside, the contents are what children call "gushy." The soft brain has its own improbable life containing galaxies, tens of thousands of people met, the microcosm of life in one place and on the diaphanous and often filthy cloth of memory, hanging there and battered on the clothesline in so many years of bad weather, wet and stiff with ice or blasted by sun and heat, part of it in shreds.
(From 'Round')
Other favorites: Lazuli Trance; God's Mouth; Tethered, Time Again (2); Bird Nightmares; Nuthatch Girl; Apple.
Library copy. Intend to re-read, so, for my future ref, I also very much liked pg 7,11,13, 18, 34, 37, 39, 40, 43, 49, 51, 61, 63, 70, 71, 81, 83-86, 93
I'm new to this author and will be reading more. My introduction to him was via a collaboration, Braided Creek. An excerpt from my review of that book:
Braided Creek"—300 very short poems, collected from letters exchanged over the years between poets Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. Many are aphoristic, some are similar to haikus. Ranging from straight-forward to the enigmatic, subjects include nature, love, friendship, and of course, aging. (About a half dozen, I think, are about stopped clocks.) More than are self-deprecating, poking fun at poets. I loved this book.
The subjects of many of these are other poets. Lorca and fellow Spaniard, Machado, make repeat visits; also Mandalstam (Russian), and Rumi (13th C., Persian).
And, as with Braided Creek (see below), many are about aging, about death, about birds. In two poems, in fact, he witnesses an unlikely sight, the moment of death of two birds, from natural causes:
Meanwhile, seventy-four years of birds
have passed. Most have died of course
so I shouldn't complain about the nearing
end of it all. I once saw a bird fall out
of a tree stone dead. I nudged it surprised
at its feather lightness that allowed it to fly.
I buried it in earth where they don't belong
any more than we do. Dead birds should be
monuments suspended forever in the air.
(from 'Seventy-four').
And here, from 'Solstice Litany'),
A very old robin drops dead
on the lawn, a first for me. Millions
of birds die but we never see it--they like
privacy in this holy, fatal moment or so
I think. We can't tell each other when we die.
Others must carry the message to and fro.
"He's gone," they'll say. While writing an average poem
destined to disappear among the millions of poems
written now by mortally average poets.
A few other notable lines:
Birds are poems I haven't caught yet.
——-
As an artist
you follow the girl in the white tennis dress
for 25,000 miles and never close the deal.
———-
Nature gets bruised, injured,
murdered in bed
———-
Some gods have been dead
a thousand years and need our magic
and music to bring them back to life.
We owe it to them. They got us started.
——-
It's up to poets to retrieve the gods.
———
From a distance the head is a bowling ball on the shoulders, but not so: a carapace and inside, the contents are what children call "gushy." The soft brain has its own improbable life containing galaxies, tens of thousands of people met, the microcosm of life in one place and on the diaphanous and often filthy cloth of memory, hanging there and battered on the clothesline in so many years of bad weather, wet and stiff with ice or blasted by sun and heat, part of it in shreds.
(From 'Round')
Other favorites: Lazuli Trance; God's Mouth; Tethered, Time Again (2); Bird Nightmares; Nuthatch Girl; Apple.
Library copy. Intend to re-read, so, for my future ref, I also very much liked pg 7,11,13, 18, 34, 37, 39, 40, 43, 49, 51, 61, 63, 70, 71, 81, 83-86, 93
I'm new to this author and will be reading more. My introduction to him was via a collaboration, Braided Creek. An excerpt from my review of that book:
Braided Creek"—300 very short poems, collected from letters exchanged over the years between poets Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. Many are aphoristic, some are similar to haikus. Ranging from straight-forward to the enigmatic, subjects include nature, love, friendship, and of course, aging. (About a half dozen, I think, are about stopped clocks.) More than are self-deprecating, poking fun at poets. I loved this book.
August 29, 2020
birds, rattlesnakes, Lorca, Machado, girls (in memory), & whatever the thing is he calls "spirit."
"It's up to poets to revive the gods." (from "Nuthatch Girl")
"Birds are poems I haven't caught yet." (from "Tiny Bird")
"It's up to poets to revive the gods." (from "Nuthatch Girl")
"Birds are poems I haven't caught yet." (from "Tiny Bird")
April 25, 2017
Must read more Jim Harrison poems.
September 16, 2018
I might not know how to read poetry anymore.
March 1, 2022
Simple and beautiful. The work of a man who lived a good life, and knew it well.
It took me a long time to finish. One of those things I didn't want to end, I suppose.
It took me a long time to finish. One of those things I didn't want to end, I suppose.
November 6, 2025
Amazing collection of poems. I definitely have to read more by this author.
August 16, 2024
This is not exactly uplifting poetry, but it is thought provoking. Harrison deals with illness and aging here quite a bit, along with his love of birds. To me, he is in a similar vein as Bukowski. And I think he’d really enjoy a chat with John Lurie
June 15, 2017
Some incredible writing here. Definitely want to read more of his work. And Lorca.
May 22, 2016
Jim Harrison died in March of this year. I had a copy of Dead Man's Float on my shelf. This slim book of poems was his last published work and I thought I should read it in tribute to his amazing career. His poetry does not fit into the classical mold, with rhyming lines and specific beats. It is a free form style maybe better described as word paintings. His language can be quite beautiful and he manages to convey complicated ideas and emotions in a minimum of words. As could be expected from a writer in his mid-seventies, many of the poems deal with aging, death and the afterlife. Harrison shows a normal amount of fear of death but even more you feel his deep sadness at having to leave a life that he loves despite the fact that his body is falling apart and he is in a great deal of pain much of the time.
Birds often appear in these poems. Harrison loves birds of all kinds and envies their freedom and ability to soar above humanity. Dogs are also high on his list of lovable creatures because of their loyalty and boundless joy of life. He conveys the fragility of the human condition through his many pains, beginning with the loss of one eye as a boy, his painful and persistent shingles, a back operation and the need for a cane to walk anywhere. But his love of life, and of the natural world always prevails.
I read through this thin volume quickly over two days. I often wanted to linger over an image or a thought but the next poem always pulled me in. I am looking forward to a second, more leisurely reading. It is a bit sad that we will have no more poems from Jim Harrison. We have lost a real master.
Birds often appear in these poems. Harrison loves birds of all kinds and envies their freedom and ability to soar above humanity. Dogs are also high on his list of lovable creatures because of their loyalty and boundless joy of life. He conveys the fragility of the human condition through his many pains, beginning with the loss of one eye as a boy, his painful and persistent shingles, a back operation and the need for a cane to walk anywhere. But his love of life, and of the natural world always prevails.
I read through this thin volume quickly over two days. I often wanted to linger over an image or a thought but the next poem always pulled me in. I am looking forward to a second, more leisurely reading. It is a bit sad that we will have no more poems from Jim Harrison. We have lost a real master.
June 5, 2016
I've always had trouble getting into the kind of poetry that, on the surface, seems merely descriptions of nature. The birds fly, the flowers are nice to look at, the fields are empty, etc, and then it's over. Robert Bly does it. Jim Harrison does it. There's undoubtedly a lot of that here.
But set against the reality of a year battling illness, shingles, surgeries, and the ever present knowledge that death would be visiting soon, this final literary work from as important an American author as Jim Harrison begins to make more sense. This is a collection of poems from a man who understood his place in the time of its writing whether he was comfortable with it or not. Dead Man's Float is sometimes reflective, sometimes remorseful, sometimes carefree; in a field, with the birds and the flowers.
But set against the reality of a year battling illness, shingles, surgeries, and the ever present knowledge that death would be visiting soon, this final literary work from as important an American author as Jim Harrison begins to make more sense. This is a collection of poems from a man who understood his place in the time of its writing whether he was comfortable with it or not. Dead Man's Float is sometimes reflective, sometimes remorseful, sometimes carefree; in a field, with the birds and the flowers.
March 28, 2016
Had this on my shelf, unread, when I heard Harrison died on Saturday. This collection of poems, matched with "The Ancient Minstrel," are two books of the novella and poetry written by someone who knew he hadn't much time left, but wrote strongly until the end. I wonder if he has anything else in line to be published, but if these were his last two books, they would be the last two works I would expect of his amazingly prolific and insightful (if daffy and a bit too enamored of the charms of women) life.
January 18, 2016
My work piles up,
I falter with disease.
Time rushes toward me —it has no brakes. Still,
the radishes are good this year.
Run them through butter,
add a little salt.
I falter with disease.
Time rushes toward me —it has no brakes. Still,
the radishes are good this year.
Run them through butter,
add a little salt.
March 5, 2017
These are very enjoyable poems...most of them just didn't find the right listener in me, hence the rating. I would like to try reading some of Harrison's other poetry collections, though.
August 1, 2018
A slender volume of verse, as they used to say. Published in 2016 toward the end of his life, there are a lot of poems on aging, ill health pain tied into nature: birds, bears, wolves, trees, grasses and water. My favorite is called "Molly the Brave" about a girlfriend from his past, long gone, and what her expansive personaliity toward her friends and her life means to old men, "We kept putting wildflowers she loved on her grave." Sixty years later, he still remembers her wet black bathing suit and how she stirred his blood:
Molly the Brave by Jim Harrison | Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Molly was the bravest
In April she would swing out
over the river on a rope
tied to an elm branch. There was still
ice along the bank and one day
her body was found down by the weir
with a bruised head, which meant she hit ice.
One summer evening she hugged me in her wet
black bathing suit after I brought her a milk shake.
My blood became hot and moved in all directions.
When we caught frogs to eat their legs
she said, ”We are animals.” And on the hill
by the river we illegally picked trillium.
All the boys wanted to marry her.
We kept putting the wildflowers she loved
on her grave. More than sixty years
later I see clearly that no one gets over anything
least of all Molly by the river,
swinging up through the air--
a bird.
Molly the Brave by Jim Harrison | Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Molly was the bravest
In April she would swing out
over the river on a rope
tied to an elm branch. There was still
ice along the bank and one day
her body was found down by the weir
with a bruised head, which meant she hit ice.
One summer evening she hugged me in her wet
black bathing suit after I brought her a milk shake.
My blood became hot and moved in all directions.
When we caught frogs to eat their legs
she said, ”We are animals.” And on the hill
by the river we illegally picked trillium.
All the boys wanted to marry her.
We kept putting the wildflowers she loved
on her grave. More than sixty years
later I see clearly that no one gets over anything
least of all Molly by the river,
swinging up through the air--
a bird.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2017
This is a book I am keeping through old age, no matter where I go. It is poetry for the hopeful man living out the end of his life. The struggles are included, but nothing counters the force of life and outlook of his spirit. He communes shakily with nature, with writing and everything else. He observes as he always does and writes what feels effortless, like jottings in a notebook. I'm not sure if this is his last work, but, if it is, it is a great monument to what feels like the last great American writer...or at least the last great American writer with a personality. Greatness is in this thin book. When Harrison died, Bill Murray was on Jimmy Kimmel and, uncharacteristic for a Kimmel show, Murray went on and on about the honor he had visiting Harrison and listening to his thoughts about life, as if he had been at the feet of a religious figure. I can't imagine Murray is in awe much. He was with Harrison. Later, I was in a bookstore in Traverse City and bought a Harrison novel. This was his old stomping ground. I said something about his death. "Yes, we miss our Jim," she said. He had the rare greatness of a common man, but he left behind wonderful words.
February 25, 2020
Poems by an old guy who could write good and then died.
“ The cost of flight is landing.”
“ Time rushes toward me it has no brakes.”
He Dog
I’m a very old dog,
much older than most dogs.
I can’t give out my wisdom
because I bark loudly and virtually
no one understands this barking except
a few other dogs of my peculiar species.
I don’t bark at cars. they’re beneath contempt.
I bark at the rising sun when it rises
red out of a forest fire.
I bark at thunder out of pure envy,
the mighty noise this sky dog makes.
I growl at myself when I sleep too much
and don’t run to the far field in the morning
where I saw the bear bigger than me and ran home.
I don’t bark at the night. I love it’s black music
I sleep under the porch, inside during winter.
Once I had a girlfriend for the day.
I have puppies but I don’t know where.
“ The cost of flight is landing.”
“ Time rushes toward me it has no brakes.”
He Dog
I’m a very old dog,
much older than most dogs.
I can’t give out my wisdom
because I bark loudly and virtually
no one understands this barking except
a few other dogs of my peculiar species.
I don’t bark at cars. they’re beneath contempt.
I bark at the rising sun when it rises
red out of a forest fire.
I bark at thunder out of pure envy,
the mighty noise this sky dog makes.
I growl at myself when I sleep too much
and don’t run to the far field in the morning
where I saw the bear bigger than me and ran home.
I don’t bark at the night. I love it’s black music
I sleep under the porch, inside during winter.
Once I had a girlfriend for the day.
I have puppies but I don’t know where.
September 30, 2019
Jim Harrison is one of my most favorite poets ever. His poems are so simple and easy to understand but with layers and layers of meaning, feelings, and emotions that wrap around you like thick cozy sweaters. His poetry glows like lights on a Christmas tree on a snowy night. His awareness of the world and her small secret gifts makes you feel like a kind stranger just put a starburst in your pocket and lucky you its a pink one. If you're the kind of human that forgets why life is so wonderful and worth it, read some of Harrison's poetry and you'll soon have tears in your eyes and be like "Oh right. That's why."
January 26, 2020
This book will make you remember why you're alive. I am so heartbroken that I will never meet Jim Harrison. What a soul. What a thinker and a genuine lover of the earth. These poems made me weep. Jim got it. He got life and purpose and cosmic scaling. He got birds and fish and land and sky. I read a borrowed library copy of this book and plan to buy it, as it deserves a place on my bookshelves.
4 out of 5 stars because there are a few lines where descriptions of people could have been more inclusive and PC.
4 out of 5 stars because there are a few lines where descriptions of people could have been more inclusive and PC.
July 2, 2020
With a focus on nature and one man's interactions with it, this deceptively simple poetry collection manages to be vivid, funny, grim, bracing, and spiritually enriching all at the same time. That this is Harrison's final book—and contains his very last poem—makes it all the more poignant. I am filled with admiration for a man who could summon the fortitude to write so beautifully in the shadow of what he clearly knew was his own rapidly approaching demise. Along with Harrison's other collections of poetry, and much of his fiction as well, I highly recommend that you read this!
January 7, 2020
I start by saying I have not read much poetry. I am a fan of some of Robert Frost’s work but not much beyond that ... until now. I read Harrison’s True North and decided to give this a try. Amazing!! I love this collection of poems. I read it daily for the last month and a half. Savoring a poem or two at a time. It is a feast ... enjoy!!
October 26, 2021
Is there a better poet on the subject of dead dogs and the mystery of nature and the magic of birds? well, not on each individually, but all three. I like Jim Harrison even when I think he's a slightly randy old man poet, cause his love of his dogs and birds can center me like almost nothing else can.
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