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Jim Harrison: Collected Ghazals
As a young poet, Jim Harrison became enamored with ghazals—a poetic form rooted in seventh-century Arabia which became popular in the United States through the translations of Rumi, Hafiz, and Ghalib. While he ignored most of the formal rules, within the energized couplets he discovered a welcome vehicle for his driving passions, muscular genius, and wrecking-ball rages. The year Harrison’s Outlyer & Ghazals appeared, The New York Times honored the book with inclusion on their coveted “Noteworthy Titles” list, provocatively noting that these poems were “worth loving, hating, and fighting over.” Collected Ghazals gathers all of Harrisons’s published ghazals into a single volume, accompanied by an afterword by poet and noted ghazal writer Denver Butson, who writes that with this collection, Harrison’s ghazals “are ours to witness again in all their messy, brave, honest, grieving, lustful, longing humanity.”
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
Published September 15, 2020
About the author
Jim Harrison
193 books1,522 followersJim Harrison was born in Grayling, Michigan, to Winfield Sprague Harrison, a county agricultural agent, and Norma Olivia (Wahlgren) Harrison, both avid readers. He married Linda King in 1959 with whom he has two daughters.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 68, 69), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969-70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).
Much of Harrison's writing depicts sparsely populated regions of North America with many stories set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona-Mexico border.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 68, 69), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969-70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).
Much of Harrison's writing depicts sparsely populated regions of North America with many stories set in places such as Nebraska's Sand Hills, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Montana's mountains, and along the Arizona-Mexico border.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 14, 2020
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/co...
Over the past several months I have been in the throes of an extended and complete Jim Harrison study. First I covered all his nonfiction, the food, sport, and travel essays that have no peers. Next I looked again at his collected poetry and maintained my historical opinion that he was nothing but a minor poet, if that. But he did persist. And that intense poetry discipline continued up until the very moment of his death. Harrison always considered himself a poet first, and all the novels, novellas, and screenplays that he was famous for did not persuade him otherwise. And so my study segued back into his fiction. Along with my current reading of this new collection of ghazals, and the collected Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated, I am proceeding with completing his vast oeuvre of collected fiction. And I am nowhere near finishing this enormous body of work. Nor do I want it to end.
Collected Ghazals offer another look into the mind of Jim Harrison. Often, the stanzas veer off in many directions. They sometimes make no sense and playfully flirt with nonsense. The forms of the poems are prosaic, long and short stanzas, and little to no connection to what has come before. But his thoughts are there. And opinions. And what he sees and how he sees remains not clear. But he offers hope and inspiration to a poet such as myself to return to writing poetry. The fact that he always wrote poetry no matter what other literary form he was working in hazards a warning that my own work is also never done. I have not mined and examined what is needed to complete my life as well as Harrison did his. Poetry, in whatever form, offers the opportunity to deal with one’s shit. And getting it spread across the page is therapeutic and cathartic. Obviously Harrison was constantly clearing his head on the written page so he could fill it again and again with what he wanted swimming in there. He has made me realize that I must do the same, and the sooner the better. Ten years ago this Easter Sunday of 2020 marks the day I fell off the roof of my cabin. It took a couple months before I could focus enough to write poetry. The new poems I began sending my editor Gordon Lish were, he said, my strongest. Not sure about that, but his supportive words made me feel better. It wasn’t long before I began to feel I was forcing things, that I had nothing more to say. I felt more inclined to write book reviews and finish some of my longer prose pieces. Slowly I ventured away from writing poetry. That is, until now. Jim Harrison has inspired and presented a way back for me into what had originally been so important to my development as a writer and human being. I have a new direction into poetry and I am grateful.
When I read a book for review I generally begin making notes as soon as a sentence or phrase moves me. Early on there was little that impelled me to do so. In fact I failed to save one sentence or phrase of his in the entire book. But I did enjoy reading it as disjointed as it was. There were smidgens of the occasional lewd comment, but nothing compared to his fiction. Feminists see much of Harrison’s work as misogynistic, but Rebecca Solnit stated that Harrison needs to be forgiven for his objectifying lecherousness on the page because they have redeeming qualities. In his life, Harrison surrounded himself with women, his wife, two daughters, countless female animals and friends, and his gentleness as a human being endeared them all to him. Besides, his fiction is “made-up” and not him, though he certainly never apologized for his sexual attraction to women and what he deemed beautiful and arousing.
As Denver Butson appropriately states in his studied afterword, “The couplets clash, rub, and spark against one another as he explores his favorite themes—from everyday concerns of making a living to his personal and mystical connection to other animals, from unrequited lust for the unattainable to soul-crushing sadness that poetry really achieves nothing at all.”
Over the past several months I have been in the throes of an extended and complete Jim Harrison study. First I covered all his nonfiction, the food, sport, and travel essays that have no peers. Next I looked again at his collected poetry and maintained my historical opinion that he was nothing but a minor poet, if that. But he did persist. And that intense poetry discipline continued up until the very moment of his death. Harrison always considered himself a poet first, and all the novels, novellas, and screenplays that he was famous for did not persuade him otherwise. And so my study segued back into his fiction. Along with my current reading of this new collection of ghazals, and the collected Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated, I am proceeding with completing his vast oeuvre of collected fiction. And I am nowhere near finishing this enormous body of work. Nor do I want it to end.
Collected Ghazals offer another look into the mind of Jim Harrison. Often, the stanzas veer off in many directions. They sometimes make no sense and playfully flirt with nonsense. The forms of the poems are prosaic, long and short stanzas, and little to no connection to what has come before. But his thoughts are there. And opinions. And what he sees and how he sees remains not clear. But he offers hope and inspiration to a poet such as myself to return to writing poetry. The fact that he always wrote poetry no matter what other literary form he was working in hazards a warning that my own work is also never done. I have not mined and examined what is needed to complete my life as well as Harrison did his. Poetry, in whatever form, offers the opportunity to deal with one’s shit. And getting it spread across the page is therapeutic and cathartic. Obviously Harrison was constantly clearing his head on the written page so he could fill it again and again with what he wanted swimming in there. He has made me realize that I must do the same, and the sooner the better. Ten years ago this Easter Sunday of 2020 marks the day I fell off the roof of my cabin. It took a couple months before I could focus enough to write poetry. The new poems I began sending my editor Gordon Lish were, he said, my strongest. Not sure about that, but his supportive words made me feel better. It wasn’t long before I began to feel I was forcing things, that I had nothing more to say. I felt more inclined to write book reviews and finish some of my longer prose pieces. Slowly I ventured away from writing poetry. That is, until now. Jim Harrison has inspired and presented a way back for me into what had originally been so important to my development as a writer and human being. I have a new direction into poetry and I am grateful.
When I read a book for review I generally begin making notes as soon as a sentence or phrase moves me. Early on there was little that impelled me to do so. In fact I failed to save one sentence or phrase of his in the entire book. But I did enjoy reading it as disjointed as it was. There were smidgens of the occasional lewd comment, but nothing compared to his fiction. Feminists see much of Harrison’s work as misogynistic, but Rebecca Solnit stated that Harrison needs to be forgiven for his objectifying lecherousness on the page because they have redeeming qualities. In his life, Harrison surrounded himself with women, his wife, two daughters, countless female animals and friends, and his gentleness as a human being endeared them all to him. Besides, his fiction is “made-up” and not him, though he certainly never apologized for his sexual attraction to women and what he deemed beautiful and arousing.
As Denver Butson appropriately states in his studied afterword, “The couplets clash, rub, and spark against one another as he explores his favorite themes—from everyday concerns of making a living to his personal and mystical connection to other animals, from unrequited lust for the unattainable to soul-crushing sadness that poetry really achieves nothing at all.”
June 8, 2024
The last line from LII
“Hot Mickey Mouse jazz and the mice jigging up the path
To the beehive castle, all with the bleached faces of congressmen.”
“Hot Mickey Mouse jazz and the mice jigging up the path
To the beehive castle, all with the bleached faces of congressmen.”
October 11, 2020
I wasn't sure what to make of this. Of course I'd crossed paths with Harrison's ghazals before but just thought they were weird poems. I had to look up what a "ghazal" even is when I started reading, and even then I didn't really come to any kind of understanding until I read the Afterword by Denver Butson. In true Harrison fashion, he isn't trying to follow "the rules" of ghazals, he's kind of just nodding to them in a way. Then I figured it out.
Still not my favorite style of Harrison's work but I found appreciation for many of the lines sprinkled throughout. I don't tend to have much appreciation for poetry that is obtuse, or seems without any real kind of meaning, and there is plenty of that here. I might even give this one only two stars if not for the spectacular cover image. For Harrison fans this one is probably essential, but I won't share it with anyone who wants to try a taste of his work.
Still not my favorite style of Harrison's work but I found appreciation for many of the lines sprinkled throughout. I don't tend to have much appreciation for poetry that is obtuse, or seems without any real kind of meaning, and there is plenty of that here. I might even give this one only two stars if not for the spectacular cover image. For Harrison fans this one is probably essential, but I won't share it with anyone who wants to try a taste of his work.
December 9, 2020
Like the format, although needed to get into the notes at the end to understand the components of a true ghazal, which Harrison varies from to a degree. Muscular, visceral opines about the outdoor life (lots of snakes in his world). Still very alive with sounds and sights on each page.
March 25, 2021
This book of poems were originally published in 1971.
Harrison wanted to get into the spirit of ghazal, an ancient 13c form,
without following the rules. An expert on ghazals, Kashmiri-American
Agha Shahid Ali, translated many traditional ghazals
and stated that Harrison's poems are not ghazals, but are
very beautiful all the same. There are at least five couplets
in its form. An example of Harrison's poem: "When it rains
I want to go north into the taiga, and before I freeze/ in arid
cold watch reindeer watch the northern lights." Uneven quality.
Harrison wanted to get into the spirit of ghazal, an ancient 13c form,
without following the rules. An expert on ghazals, Kashmiri-American
Agha Shahid Ali, translated many traditional ghazals
and stated that Harrison's poems are not ghazals, but are
very beautiful all the same. There are at least five couplets
in its form. An example of Harrison's poem: "When it rains
I want to go north into the taiga, and before I freeze/ in arid
cold watch reindeer watch the northern lights." Uneven quality.
May 8, 2023
These didn't feel like ghazals. They were more disjointed couplets of observations about the world. A lot of them were kind of sexist and gross and incel-y? Took me leave around ghazal 35 after the shockingly racist couplet "How could she cheat on me with that African? Let's refer / back to the lore of the locker room & shabby albino secrets." I won't see deny he can write, but this collection definitely wasn't it.
May 30, 2022
Jim Harrison found the ghazal a very freeing form, although his poems are arguably not ghazals at all in the formal sense. He wrote one entire book of ghazals and some others scattered through his career. This book gathers them all in one place.
June 5, 2022
I only very recently discovered what a ghazal is and also learned that Harrison’s are only really loosely considered so. There were some couplets that really spoke to me but the ones I either didn’t understand or that I couldn’t relate to seemed to far outnumber the nuggets I considered gems.
January 31, 2025
Shame on me for picking up a book titled “Collected Ghazals” expecting to read ghazals. If you’re going to call a form by name, it had damn well better adhere to the rules of that form.
.
To me, it’s a stretch to call these ghazals. Part of my fascination of ghazals is the end rhyme in the second line of each couplet and Harrison eschews that characteristic in all of these; I was quite disappointed to find this out.
.
As such, each of these poems just feels like a hodgepodge of disjointed thoughts, almost as if Harrison had written a hoard of couplets and then gathered them up like a deck of cards, finessing them into order based on whatever small commonalities they hold. “Metaphorical leaps,” as he calls them, “faithful to their own music,” which is perhaps just another way to say the poet can’t get outside of his own head (a common problem anymore).
.
There is still plenty of finesse in these, some sense of craft, but I find it difficult to really appreciate them because (at least for me) the leaps to be made are too great. The lack of titles also throws me off; reading these back to back, it almost seems to separate the couplets into their own little isolated poems. Each “ghazal” does sort of stick to a very, very loose theme or idea or, perhaps, feeling; however, I’m lacking anything to anchor them to, and in a traditional ghazal, the last line (with the echo of the end rhyme) tends to round out the rest of the couplets in a meaningful way. We don’t get that here.
.
After saying all of that, I do find some small pleasure in reading these, which speaks to Harrison’s level of ability. Yet, any pleasure I find in reading one couplet is quickly erased by the next, because I know they’re not meant to cohere; I’m starting over new with each new couplet. In some ways they remind me of Philip Levine’s poems, simple in structure, yet complex in thought, matter-of-fact, blue collar, take it or leave it. I’ll take Philip Levine, but I’m not sure about Jim Harrison just yet.
.
I am overall quite disappointed in these and I cannot really find my way into them; calling them ghazals while overtly shirking the rules of the form is pretentious and irresponsible (at least to a purist of form), but I could still see myself trying to read these again at a later date, attempting to squeeze something worthwhile from them.
.
Three stars because the couplets themselves are tight, rhythmic, and don’t seem to waste a single word.
.
At the very least, I will be seeking out the rest of Harrison’s work.
.
To me, it’s a stretch to call these ghazals. Part of my fascination of ghazals is the end rhyme in the second line of each couplet and Harrison eschews that characteristic in all of these; I was quite disappointed to find this out.
.
As such, each of these poems just feels like a hodgepodge of disjointed thoughts, almost as if Harrison had written a hoard of couplets and then gathered them up like a deck of cards, finessing them into order based on whatever small commonalities they hold. “Metaphorical leaps,” as he calls them, “faithful to their own music,” which is perhaps just another way to say the poet can’t get outside of his own head (a common problem anymore).
.
There is still plenty of finesse in these, some sense of craft, but I find it difficult to really appreciate them because (at least for me) the leaps to be made are too great. The lack of titles also throws me off; reading these back to back, it almost seems to separate the couplets into their own little isolated poems. Each “ghazal” does sort of stick to a very, very loose theme or idea or, perhaps, feeling; however, I’m lacking anything to anchor them to, and in a traditional ghazal, the last line (with the echo of the end rhyme) tends to round out the rest of the couplets in a meaningful way. We don’t get that here.
.
After saying all of that, I do find some small pleasure in reading these, which speaks to Harrison’s level of ability. Yet, any pleasure I find in reading one couplet is quickly erased by the next, because I know they’re not meant to cohere; I’m starting over new with each new couplet. In some ways they remind me of Philip Levine’s poems, simple in structure, yet complex in thought, matter-of-fact, blue collar, take it or leave it. I’ll take Philip Levine, but I’m not sure about Jim Harrison just yet.
.
I am overall quite disappointed in these and I cannot really find my way into them; calling them ghazals while overtly shirking the rules of the form is pretentious and irresponsible (at least to a purist of form), but I could still see myself trying to read these again at a later date, attempting to squeeze something worthwhile from them.
.
Three stars because the couplets themselves are tight, rhythmic, and don’t seem to waste a single word.
.
At the very least, I will be seeking out the rest of Harrison’s work.
September 7, 2021
I give it 3 stars but Jim Harrison is amazing. It would have been much better if they explained what a ghazal is at the beginning of the book instead of at the end.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews