The Literary Fly Fisher

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times’ Dean Kuipers, published on December 18, author and angler Jim Harrison (about whom I have written here) describes  being “called” to writing when he was 19-years-old:

I was out on the roof at night in the summer, stars, the Milky Way, and I got just absorbed into poetry,” Harrison recalls. “I thought it was actually my calling that night. And then, when my dad and my sister got killed [in a car accident] a couple years later, I realized that even though I was married there couldn’t be any higher obligation on earth. Because if people you love die what are you going to do?

As uneven and often rough as his writing can be, in my opinion, Harrison has taken his obligation as a writer more seriously than most. This is especially the case with his poetry. Judging by his talk with Kuipers, his new collection of poems, Dead Man’s Float (2016) will be no exception. You can order it directly from the publisher, Copper Canyon Press. And for more of the interview with an unusually introspective Harrison, read “Jim Harrison on spirits, bad poetry and the wonder of nature.”

This entry was posted on January 2, 2016 at 6:05 PM and is filed under Environmental Literature, Fly Fishing Literature, The Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.