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Poets on Poetry
Living Off the Country: Essays on Poetry and Place
When he was a homesteader in Alaska, poet John Haines moved away from language and institutions to an older and simpler existence. In solitude, listening to his own voice, the events of his life reached into the past and the future.
We live on the surface, he discovered. It is the land that makes people. If a poet will see, will feel, will interpret his place and then relate that experience to what he knows of the world at large, he will have a life in imagination, a vitality beyond appearances.
John Haines is author of At the End of Poems 1948-1954; Fables and New and Selected Essays; and The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer. He received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1991.
We live on the surface, he discovered. It is the land that makes people. If a poet will see, will feel, will interpret his place and then relate that experience to what he knows of the world at large, he will have a life in imagination, a vitality beyond appearances.
John Haines is author of At the End of Poems 1948-1954; Fables and New and Selected Essays; and The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer. He received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1991.
- GenresPoetry
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
2 people are currently reading
89 people want to read
About the author
John Meade Haines
37 books19 followersBorn in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1924, John Haines studied at the National Art School, the American University, and the Hans Hoffmann School of Fine Art. The author of more than ten collections of poetry, his recent works include At the End of This Summer: Poems 1948-1954 (Copper Canyon Press, 1997); The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer (1993); and New Poems 1980-88 (1990), for which he received both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Western States Book Award.
He has also published a book of essays entitled Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays (1996), and a memoir, The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness (1989).
Haines spent more than twenty years homesteading in Alaska, and has taught at Ohio University, George Washington University, and the University of Cincinnati. Named a Fellow by The Academy of American Poets in 1997, his other honours include the Alaska Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress. John Haines lives in Helena, Montana.
[source]
He has also published a book of essays entitled Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays (1996), and a memoir, The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness (1989).
Haines spent more than twenty years homesteading in Alaska, and has taught at Ohio University, George Washington University, and the University of Cincinnati. Named a Fellow by The Academy of American Poets in 1997, his other honours include the Alaska Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress. John Haines lives in Helena, Montana.
[source]
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 2, 2009
absolutely loved some of this book, was completely bored by others, but the love outweighed the boredom by far. i'd be interested in haines' take on the current "literature of the north," and i'd also like to see him acknowledge womens writing and experience a bit more, but...well, generation gap. i emailed him and he said to send him a letter to get a more prompt response. it's like that.
July 31, 2010
Wonderful essays on poetry and place.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews