Dead Man's Float (Paperback)

Jim Harrison

ISBN 10: 1556595425 / ISBN 13: 9781556595424

Published by Copper Canyon Press,U.S., 2018

About this Item

Paperback. Jim Harrison's final book of poems, published only a few months before his death"[Jim Harrison] is still close to the source.Dead Man's Float is, as its title would suggest, a flinty and psalmist look at mortality and wonder."-Los Angeles Times"Mr. Harrison's novels and poems over the last two decades have been increasingly preoccupied with mortality, never so much as in Dead Man's Float, his very good new book of verse. Here he details the shocks of shingles and back surgery, as well as the comprehensive low wheeze of a fraying body. The joys in Mr. Harrison's world have remained consistent. If sex is less frequently an option, his appetites for food and the outdoors are undiminished. In one poem, he goes out into a rainstorm at night and sits naked at a picnic table. In another, he writes: 'I envied the dog lying in the yard/so I did it.'. The title of this volume, Dead Man's Float, refers to a way to stay alive in the water when one has grown tired while far from shore. As a poet, however, Mr. Harrison is not passively drifting. He remains committed to language, and to what pleasures he can catch."-Dwight Garner, The New York Times"Few enough are the books I decide to keep beyond a culling or two. Barring fire or flood, Dead Man's Float will be in my library for the rest of my life. If it's the last poetry collection we get from Harrison-and I hope it isn't-it is as fine an example of his efforts as any."-Missoula Independent"Harrison's poems succeed on the basis of an open heart and a still-ravenous appetite for life."-The Texas Observer"Forthright and unaffected, even brash, Harrison always scoops us straight into the world whether writing fiction or nonfiction [and] 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"Jim Harrison has been a remarkably productive writer across a multitude of genres. His poetry is earthy, witty, keenly observed and tied closely to the natural world [and] mortality looms large in Dead Man's Float, his 14th collection of poems. [F]orceful, lucid, fearlessly honest, Harrison knows that the nearness of death intensifies life."-Arlice Davenport, Wichita Daily EagleWarblerThis year we have two gorgeousyellow 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 ateach other, startled by our existence.In a month or so, when they reach the sizeof bumblebees they'll fly to Costa Rica without a map.Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was one of America's most versatile and celebrated writers. One of America's leading novelists and poets, "Jim Harrison is a writer with immortality in him."-The Sunday Times Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781556595424

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Dead Man's Float (Paperback)
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press,U.S.
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1556595425
• ISBN 13: 9781556595424
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

“Bracingly candid, gracefully elegiac, tough, and passionate, Harrison travels the deep river of the spirit.” ―Booklist

“[Jim Harrison] is still close to the source. . . . Dead Man’s Float is, as its title would suggest, a flinty and psalmist look at mortality and wonder.” ―Los Angeles Times

Two months after the hardback publication of Dead Man’s Float, Jim Harrison was found dead in his home office. Harrison always thought he would die young, and when he didn’t he became increasingly preoccupied with time. As old age proved to be a harrowing trial, Harrison titled his book after a survival technique used by swimmers during an exhausting journey. This paperback edition includes the poem Harrison was writing at the time of his death, published here for the first time.

From “Bridge”:

. . . Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies . . .

Jim Harrison was the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His books have been translated into two dozen languages, and in 2007 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

About the Author

Jim Harrison was the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction--including Legends of the Fall, the acclaimed trilogy of novellas, and The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems. His books have been translated into two dozen languages, and in 2007 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.