The Theory and Practice of Rivers

Harrison, Jim

ISBN 10: 0916947068 / ISBN 13: 9780916947064

Published by Winn Books, Seattle, Washington, 1986

About this Item

Theory & Practice of Rivers, poems by Jim Harrison and illustrations by Russell Chatham. Book Condition: Very Good. The text block is in near fine condition with no marks, tears, or dog ears. Not a library book nor a remainder. No inscriptions or bookplate. The book would be in fine condition but for the red remainder mark on the bottom edge. The wrap is in near fine condition. 8 ½ x 5 ½, 53 pages, 4 ounces. XX [Poetry Foundation info]: Poet and novelist Jim Harrison spent much of his life in Michigan on a farm near where he was born, as well as Montana and Arizona. His connection to rural landscapes was evident in his free-verse, imagistic poetry, which often explores human and animal drives set against an unforgiving natural world. Noting the poetry?s relation to Hemingway?s prose style in a review of Harrison?s Selected & New Poems 1961?1981, poet and critic Richard Tillinghast declared in the New York Times that ?Mr. Harrison has few equals as a writer on outdoor life, the traditional heritage and proving ground of the American male.? Harrison earned a BA and MA at Michigan State University, and he taught briefly at SUNY Stony Brook. After the publication of his first collection of poetry, Plain Song (1965), he returned to Michigan, where he worked as a freelance journalist and laborer until he began to earn a living from his writing. Harrison published more than a dozen collections of poetry, including Livingston Suite (2005), Saving Daylight (2006), In Search of Small Gods (2009), Songs of Unreason (2011), and Dead Man's Float (2016). He was also well known as a fiction writer, publishing numerous novels and collections. His novel Legends of the Fall (1979) received considerable critical acclaim and was made into a 1995 feature film. Harrison wrote several screenplays for Warner Bros. and other studios. He served as poetry editor of The Nation and coeditor of Sumac. He wrote a food column, ?The Raw and the Cooked,? for Esquire magazine, and his collection of essays, Just Before Dark (1991), includes some of his food writing along with literary and nature essays. Harrison died in 2016.

Seller Inventory # 000416

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Theory and Practice of Rivers
• Publisher: Winn Books, Seattle, Washington
• Publication Date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0916947068
• ISBN 13: 9780916947064
• Binding: Soft cover
• Illustrator: Chatham, Russell
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 4 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

The Theory and Practice of Rivers

Reviews

The long title sequence of Harrison's seventh poetry collection is a journey upward from tragedy and unconsciousness, a fitful amalgam of memory and myth, meditation and nightmare, lucidity and delirium. It's the life-passing-before-one's-eyes at the precipice of death rendered in tranquility. In "trying to become alert enough to live," the narrator sinks and surfaces, clutching at vivid bits of psychic debris that collectively define "the longest journey taken in a split second." Harrison combines the rustic, the portentous, and the wry ("I had forgotten what it was I liked/ about life. I hear if you own a chimpanzee/ they cease at a point to be funny") with mixed but often penetrating results. Spare, idiographic illustrations by Russell Chatham complement the poems. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.