Copper Canyon Press, paperback
Publication Date: August 8, 2023
Publisher Marketing: Throughout the pages of Jim Harrison: Early Poems, a young, ambitious poet engaged with a wide range of subjects, styles and forms, sounding for voice and vision in lyrics, prose poems, long suites, and propulsive ghazals. Jim Harrison called poetry "the true bones of my life." Jim Harrison: Early Poems contains every poem that appeared in his first five books of poetry, all published before his breakthrough novella trilogy, Legends of the Fall. As Colum McCann writes in his generous introduction, "Jim Harrison: Early Poems showcases the poems of the early years. Harrison gets us--his readers--to have a hard look at ourselves primarily because he opens up his internal tuning fork to all sorts of sounds and ideas. There is enormous bravery here." Throughout these pages a young, ambitious poet engages with a wide range of subjects, styles and forms, sounding for his voice and vision in lyrics, prose poems, long suites, and propulsive ghazals. Regarding the poetry written during this period, Publishers Weekly called Harrison, "an untrammeled renegade genius," noting that he was "a poet talking to you instead of around himself, while doing absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language."
