New Releases by Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison’s The Theory and Practice of Rivers returns to print as a celebratory, stand-alone volume. In her heartfelt and powerful introduction, Rebecca Solnit calls this collection both an elegy, inspired by the death of Harrison’s teenage niece, and a “loose memoir” teeming with thoughts and images that leap intuitively across subjects, recalling myriad experiences, places, and encounters. A handwritten draft of the title poem, retrieved from Harrison’s extensive literary archive, provides a rare and intimate window into his surging creative process. As Outside magazine puts it, The Theory and Practice of Rivers is filled with “moving water, the search for consolation and meaning in the sublime rightness of wild landscape.” This contemporary classic speaks to the rivers and cascades in all of us, the ceaseless motion by which our lives are determined.

In 1970, Jim Harrison is the age when Christ died and carries the cross of alcoholism and depression. First he lost an eye and then his soul sister and his father, run over by a drunk driver. He is tired of earning his bread teaching literature to posh kids on the East Coast, so he reads Lorca and Rimbaud as if his life depended on each verse and goes fishing in remote places as if that would get him away from himself. Until one day he has an accident in the mountains: he falls off a cliff and shatters his spine. He will have to stay in bed for months and it is not clear if he will ever walk again. It could be the end. Or the beginning. Harrison spent the next two months bedridden and writing day and night on his father''s old Remington. The result was "Wolf," an overwhelming, furious and beautiful novel, at times brutal, and lucid in every line.

Chien Brun, "personnage fétiche que l’on rencontre tout au long de l’œuvre de Jim Harrison", était, pour ainsi dire, un alter ego fantasmé de l’auteur. "Fabulateur, frondeur, sorte de “lord Byron des femmes de petite vertu’’, cet incorrigible anar – qui fait croire qu’il a du sang indien dans les veines – s’ingénie à rouler dans la farine les shérifs et les juges du Michigan, une contrée dont il connaît les moindres ruisseaux. Pas de toit, pas de numéro de Sécurité sociale, “né pour ne pas coopérer avec le monde’’, Chien Brun ne possède qu’une vieille peau d’ours. Et assez d’humanité pour attendrir les lecteurs." André Clavel, Le Temps Jim Harrison a écrit six histoires, entre 1990 et 2013, mettant en scène son célèbre Chien Brun. Les voici réunies pour la première fois en un seul volume, traduit et préfacé par Brice Matthieussent.

The first general nonfiction title in thirty years from a giant of American letters, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive collection of Jim Harrison''s essays and journalism—some never before published New York Times–bestselling author Jim Harrison (1937–2016) was a writer with a poet’s economy of style and a trencherman’s appetites. Praised as a “national treasure” (Chicago Tribune) and published in twenty-seven languages, he was one of this country’s most beloved and critically acclaimed authors. Best known for his poetry and fiction such as Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth, Harrison was also a prolific nonfiction writer, with columns running in Sports Illustrated and Esquire, and work in Outside, Field & Stream, and others. The first collection of Harrison’s general nonfiction in thirty years, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive volume of essays and journalism—from the near-classic to the never-published. With his trademark ribald humor, compassion, and full-throated zest for life, The Search for the Genuine pays tribute to writers from Bukowski to Neruda to Peter Matthiessen, and examines the distance between literary reputation and the work itself; he attains something like satori in the field hunting grouse; he reports on Yellowstone for the park’s hundredth anniversary, when he was merely a tourist to the part of Montana he would eventually call home; he takes to the open sea in pursuit of roosterfish, marlin, tarpon, and, once, to observe a scientific mission tagging sharks; he delivers a heartbreaking essay on life—and, for those attempting to cross in the ever-more dangerous gaps, death—on the US-Mexico border. Always he comes back to the spirit and to connection with the natural world and the people who sustained him; throughout the book his feeling for the American landscape rings out. Lovingly introduced by acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist Luis Alberto Urrea, The Search for the Genuine is a feast that captures a lifetime of reading, writing, and living to the fullest, from a true “American original” (San Francisco Chronicle).

Starred Review from Booklist: "This robust volume is a testament to the fortitude of a great American poet''s work... [a] landmark collection." From the Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams: "Jim Harrison...was among the great ones—an elevated soul in all his unruliness who favored his senses and courted the wild on the page and in the world. His was a storied life that loomed large, and we are the beneficiaries. ''Such a powerful wounded poet—wrote as if he had to sing with a cut throat . . . and he did have to sing,'' said Jorie Graham." Jim Harrison: Complete Poems is the definitive collection from one of America’s iconic writers. Introduced by activist and naturalist writer Terry Tempest Williams, this tour de force contains every poem Harrison published over his fifty-year career, as well as a section of previously unpublished "Last Poems." Here are the nature-based lyrics of his early work, the high-velocity ghazals, a harrowing prose-poem “correspondence” with a Russian suicide, the riverine suites, fearless meditations inspired by the Zen monk Crazy Cloud, and a joyous conversation in haiku-like gems with friend and fellow poet Ted Kooser. Weaving throughout these 1000 pages are Harrison’s legendary passions and appetites, his love songs and lamentations, and a clarion call to pay attention to the life you are actually living. Jim Harrison: Complete Poems confirms that Jim Harrison is a talented storyteller with a penetrating eye for details, or as Publishers Weeklycalled him, “an untrammeled renegade genius... a poet talking to you instead of around himself, while doing absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language.” NOTE:Jim Harrison: Complete Poems also appears as a three-volume box set. Print run limited to 750 copies. Each volume is introduced by a different writer: Colum McCann, Joy Williams, and John Freeman. The box set retails for $85 and ISBN is 9781556596414.

Le thème de « la recherche de l’authentique » résume à lui seul le projet littéraire commun à toute l’œuvre de Jim Harrison. Dans ce recueil de textes, inédits pour certains, écrits pour divers journaux et magazines au cours des cinquante dernières années, l’auteur de Dalva, Légendes d’automne et Un bon jour pour mourir parle avec une verve inégalée du bonheur et de la fragilité d’exister. Tout devient littérature sous sa plume acérée, éblouissante d’intelligence et d’humour. Qu’il tourne les pages de son enfance, évoque une mémorable partie de pêche ou de chasse, confesse son admiration pour Neruda, Steinbeck, Bukowski, ou sa crainte de voir les États-Unis transformés en « Disneyland fasciste », il livre un autoportrait saisissant et sans complaisance. L’occasion pour lui de nous ouvrir les yeux sur ce précieux viatique qui a guidé sa vie face aux imposteurs de tout poil : être vrai, trouver au fond de soi le chemin de la « frêle passerelle entre ne rien attendre et tout désirer ».

Trois novellas. Plusieurs voix : désabusées, conquérantes ou gloutonnes, à l''image même d''Harrison. Chien Brun, d''abord, l''Indien bambocheur du Michigan, qui va devoir composer entre détresse charnelle et blessures de l''âme. La faute à qui ? Trois épouses républicaines très BCBG prêtes à en découdre... Last but not least, Big Jim lui-même, dans une variation autobiographique émouvante et poétique. " L''été où il faillit mourir met en scène trois univers totalement différents, dont l''un, Épouses républicaines, est la preuve que Jim Harrison est capable de tout, même d''être une femme ! Totalement enthousiasmant. " Olivia de Lamberterie, Elle

" Trois nouvelles. Des personnages qui n''ont rien de commun. Des copains de campus devenus sages volant au secours d''un des leurs dont l''engagement terroriste ne s''est pas élimé. Une femme mûre qui ne veut simplement que s''évader de sa vie pour en retrouver la source. Un grand diable d''homme des bois qui a retrouvé un chef indien en plongée et veut l''enterrer dans le cimetière caché de ses ancêtres dont une accorte ethnologue traque le passé à travers lui... Que ses personnages aient quitté les bois pour la civilisation, les nostalgies de jeunesse, les fidélités qu''on se doit à soi-même, Jim Harrison leur garde leur sève, leurs élans et écrit l''un des plus beaux livres depuis Légendes d''automne. " Cosmopolitan

IBM® CICS® is a mixed language application server that runs on IBM Z®. Over the 50 years since CICS was introduced in 1969, enterprises have used the qualities of service (QoSs) that CICS provides to allow them to create high throughput and secure transactional applications that have powered their business. As the IT landscape has evolved, so has CICS to allow these applications to integrate with new platforms and still provide value to the rest of the business. Because of this capability, many businesses still rely on CICS to power their core applications. This IBM Redpaper publication focuses on modernizing these CICS applications, allowing them to integrate with cloud-native applications. This modernization can be achieved either by constructing application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow new cloud-native applications to connect to your existing assets, rewriting parts of your application in newer languages and hosting them back on CICS, or by using CICS capabilities to extend your applications to provide new capabilities and functions. The paper takes a traditional example application and shows you how it works. Then, the paper extends the example, rewrites portions of its functions, and enables its APIs. It also explains how CICS applications can use continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) to deliver, test, and deploy code into CICS easily and with quality.

Dans ce roman choral où s''entrecroisent les parcours de Dalva et de ses proches, Jim Harrison exorcise sa hantise de la mort et brasse l''histoire de l''Amérique, depuis les guerres indiennes jusqu''à nos jours. Derrière cette fresque truculente et nostalgique, La Route du retour témoigne de l''amour de Big Jim pour ce pays aux horizons aussi grands que ses mythes. " La Route du retour est un pur chef-d''œuvre. Ambitieux, foudroyant. " Lire, Catherine Argand

Instituteur dans une bourgade rurale du Nord-Michigan, Joseph coule des jours tranquilles dans la ferme de ses parents. Entre la chasse et la pêche, il partage ses nuits avec Rosalee, l''amie d''enfance, l''éternelle fiancée. Quand survient Catherine, une de ses élèves, âgée de dix-sept ans et très affranchie, déterminée à bouleverser le cours des choses... Sur un thème presque banal, Harrison a composé le plus simple mais aussi le plus beau de tous ses romans. traduit de l''anglais (Etats-Unis) par Sara Oudin

Cuites, amour et dynamite, un amateur de pêche mélancolique, un ancien du Viêt-Nam et une jeune femme aux jambes interminables traversent l''Amérique des années soixante, unis par une " mission " folle et héroïque : faire sauter un barrage du Grand Canyon. Mais l''équipée sauvage de cet improbable trio va bientôt tourner à la gueule de bois carabinée ! " Véritable cow-boy de l''écriture, Jim Harrison nous arrive comme un don Quichotte d''outre-Atlantique qui réintroduit le plaisir d''une lecture simple mais fulgurante. " Le Monde Traduit de l''anglais (Etats-Unis) par Sara Oudin

Tous les lecteurs de Jim Harrison connaissent son appétit vorace pour la bonne chère, les meilleurs vins et autres plaisirs bien terrestres qui irriguent son œuvre. Grâce à ce Sacré gueuleton, même les plus fidèles d’entre eux seront surpris de découvrir l’étendue de ses écrits sur le sujet. Rassemblés pour la première fois en un seul volume, ces articles publiés au fil de sa carrière ne se contentent pas de célébrer les plaisirs de la table. Savoureux quand il croque les travers comparés des critiques littéraires et des experts œnologues, féroce quand il brocarde l’affadissement du goût et la nourriture industrielle, Big Jim parle de gastronomie avec la même verve que lorsqu’il évoque la littérature, la politique, l’amour des femmes ou l’amour tout court. En chemin, il déroule des recettes toujours réjouissantes, parfois inattendues, et fait preuve d’un humour dévastateur à l’égard des pisse-vinaigres de tout poil. Parents, amis, écrivains, hommes politiques et personnages de roman se croisent au fil des pages pour composer un autoportrait du gourmand vagabond, une biographie en creux de l’auteur de Dalva, de Légendes d’automne et du Vieux Saltimbanque. Ce livre est un véritable festin littéraire qui comblera tous les appétits.

BrainFishing is the “missing link”, the hands-on, practical guide for professionals looking to forge better agreements and build stronger relationships in difficult and challenging situations. It is the one, slim book that will complete your professional bookshelf. Designed for anyone who manages, sells, coaches, negotiates, resolves conflict or needs to influence other people, BrainFishing will help you understand and apply questioning skills in new, effective, and creative ways. Filled with examples, stories and exercises to help you put the skills and tools to work immediately, BrainFishing will help change your relationships from the ground up. And there’s the neuroscience behind it all, too!

A spirited collection of poems inspired by the Zen practice of one of America''s most celebrated authors, Jim Harrison, a New York Times best-selling author. The popular novels of Jim Harrison (1937–2016) represent only part of his literary output—he was also widely acclaimed for the “renegade genius” of his powerful, expressive poems. After Ikkyū is the first collection of Harrison’s poetry directly inspired by his many years of Zen practice. The writing here is at once thought-provoking and passionate, immortalizing a celebrated American writer’s relationship to Zen in beautiful verse. These short, spirited poems will inspire you to look at life differently with a newfound sense of wonder and gratitude for everyday moments.

"Les trois longues nouvelles de Légendes d''automne occupent une place singulière dans l''oeuvre de Jim Harrison. Chacune d''elles a la dureté limpide et tranchante d''un cristal de roche arraché tel quel aux profondeurs de la psyché humaine. Jamais sans doute l''écrivain ne retrouva ensuite la pureté et la puissance de ces nouvelles compactes, marquées au sceau de l''excès et de la démesure. La vengeance est l''obsession de la première, la métamorphose le thème élégiaque de la deuxième, un destin tragique irrigue la dernière. Jamais non plus dans la production ultérieure, certes prolixe et généreuse de Jim Harrison, la folie, la mort, les carnages, les délires, l''errance et le vice, la cupidité et l''égoïsme, les aberrations du comportement et de l''Histoire ne s''entrelaceront avec autant de violence et de grâce aux beautés chatoyantes des êtres et du paysage américain." Brice Matthieussent

An essay collection from “the Henry Miller of food writing” and New York Times–bestselling author of The Raw and the Cooked (The Wall Street Journal). Jim Harrison was beloved for his untamed prose and larger-than-life appetite. Collecting many of his most entertaining and inspired food pieces for the first time, A Really Big Lunch “brings him roaring to the page again in all his unapologetic immoderacy, with spicy bon mots and salty language augmented by family photographs” (NPR). From the titular New Yorker article about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to essays on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s aperçus and delight in the pleasures of the senses. Between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades. Including articles that first appeared in Brick, Playboy, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, and more, as well as an introduction by Mario Batali, A Really Big Lunch offers “sage and succulent essays” for the literary gourmand (Shelf Awareness, starred review).

The story of how a summer job spawned a long and rewarding career as an artist Coca-Cola is a true American original and one of the world''s most recognized and popular American products. In The Coca-Cola Art of Jim Harrison, the artist traces his lifelong love affair with the Coca-Cola trademark that began during his childhood in rural South Carolina. Harrison enjoyed drinking the sweet and effervescent beverage, but he also was attracted to the Coca-Cola trademark that was blazoned on buildings and signs in his home town. After years of marveling at the work of local sign painter J. J. Cornforth, Harrison approached the seventy-year-old for a summer job. During several summers Cornforth taught Harrison the craft. When the young artist climbed atop the scaffold in the summer of 1952 to paint his first Coca-Cola sign, little did he know that he was launching a career as one of America''s foremost landscape artists. In 1975 Harrison created a painting of a country store that featured a fading Coca-Cola sign he and Cornforth had painted twenty years earlier. The painting, titled "Disappearing America," was offered as one of the first limited-edition Coca-Cola collector prints for $40 by Frame House Gallery. All 1,500 copies sold out quickly, propelling him into the national spotlight through the publisher''s network of 600 dealers. Harrison soon became the undisputed leader in rural Americana art, with this and many of his other prints appreciating up to 3,000 percent of their original value. Since entering into a licensee relationship with the Coca-Cola Company in 1995, Harrison has continued developing limited-edition prints, including his popular annual Coca-Cola calendar. Not surprisingly, Harrison has become an avid collector of old Coca-Cola signs. His studio is lined with a vast array of this collection, which serves as inspiration for new works of art.

Dans ce dernier livre publié moins d’un mois avant sa mort, Jim Harrison a choisi de poursuivre ses mémoires sous la forme d''un texte à la troisième personne pour « échapper à l''illusion de réalité propre à l’autobiographie ». Souvenirs d''enfance, découverte de la poésie, mariage, amour de la nature, célébration des plaisirs de la chair et de la table, alcools et paradis artificiels, Jim Harrison tisse le roman d’une vie. Véritable testament littéraire, Le Vieux Saltimbanque est à l’image de Big Jim : plus libre et provocateur que jamais, plus touchant aussi, en marge de toutes les conventions.

"Harrison''s poems succeed on the basis of an open heart and a still-ravenous appetite for life."—The Texas Observer The title Dead Man''s Float is inspired by a technique used by swimmers to conserve energy when exhausted, to rest up for the long swim to shore. In his fourteenth volume of poetry, Jim Harrison presents keen awareness of physical pains, delights in the natural world, and reflects on humanity''s tentative place in a universe filled with ninety billion galaxies. By turns mournful and celebratory, these fearless and exuberant poems accomplish what Harrison''s poems always do: wake us up to the possibilities of being fully alive. "Forthright and unaffected, even brash, Harrison always scoops us straight into the world whether writing fiction or nonfiction. This new collection [Dead Man''s Float] takes its cue from a technique swimmers use to conserve energy in deep water, and Harrison 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 "Harrison doesn''t write like anyone else, relying entirely on the toughness of his vision and intensity of feeling."—Publishers Weekly Warbler This year we have two gorgeous yellow 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 at each other, startled by our existence. In a month or so, when they reach the size of bumblebees they''ll fly to Costa Rica without a map. Jim Harrison, one of America''s most versatile and celebrated writers, is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction—including Legends of the Fall, the acclaimed trilogy of novellas. With a fondness for open space and anonymous thickets, he divides his time between Montana and southern Arizona.

Jim Harrison’s first novel—a walk on the wild side from “a force of nature in American letters” (The Seattle Times). The New York Times–bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth—Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. Praised as “a raunchy, funny, swaggering, angry, cocksure book,” Wolf tells the story of a man who abandons Manhattan after too many nameless women and drunken nights, to roam the wilderness of northern Michigan, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the rare wolves that prowl that territory (The New York Times Book Review). “When you turn the last page and Swanson’s voice stops, you want to flip back and keep listening.” —The Examiner

“A sensitive, powerful love story about a man on the cutting edge of life.” —Richard Brautigan In Farmer, Jim Harrison tells the story of Joseph, a forty-three-year-old farmer-schoolteacher who suddenly finds himself at a crossroads. Forced to choose between two lovers one a tantalizing young student, the other his beautiful childhood friend he must also decide whether or not to stay on the farm or finally seek the wider, more worldly horizons he has avoided all his life. Farmer is a wondrous blend of insight, storytelling, and the author’s uncanny ability to evoke the mysteries and beauties of the natural world. “A beautiful novel”, Farmer serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison’s remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world (The Boston Globe). “A quiet triumph . . . Yes, it is the old story again. Taking it and making it new, as Harrison has done, is a miracle on the order of the loaves and fishes. But then so are all good novels.” —The Washington Post

A collection of novellas from the New York Times–bestselling author—“arguably America’s foremost master of the novella . . . A force of nature on the page” (The Washington Post). The Mark Twain Award–winning author of Legends of the Fall delivers three novellas that highlight his phenomenal range as a writer, shot through with his trademark wit and keen insight into the human condition. Harrison has fun with his own reputation in the title novella, about an aging writer in Montana who weathers the slings and arrows of literary success and tries to cope with the sow he buys on a whim and the unplanned litter of piglets that follows soon after. In Eggs, a Montana woman reminisces about collecting eggs at her grandparents’ country house. Years later, having never had a child, she attempts to do so. And in The Case of the Howling Buddhas, retired Detective Sunderson—a recurring character from Harrison’s New York Times bestseller The Great Leader and The Big Seven—is hired to investigate a bizarre cult that achieves satori by howling along with howler monkeys at the zoo. “Still independent, fierce and feral,” The Ancient Minstrel confirms Jim Harrison as one of the most cherished and important writers in modern America (David Gates, The New York Times).

This IBM® Redbooks® publication focuses on developing Web service applications in IBM CICS®. It takes the broad view of developing and modernizing CICS applications for XML, Web services, SOAP, and SOA support, and lays out a reference architecture for developing these kinds of applications. We start by discussing Web services in general, then review how CICS implements Web services. We offer an overview of different development approaches: bottom-up, top-down, and meet-in-the-middle. We then look at how you would go about exposing a CICS application as a Web service provider, again looking at the different approaches. The book then steps through the process of creating a CICS Web service requester. We follow this by looking at CICS application aggregation (including 3270 applications) with IBM Rational® Application Developer for IBM System z® and how to implement CICS Web Services using CICS Cloud technology. The first part is concluded with hints and tips to help you when implementing this technology. Part two of this publication provides performance figures for a basic Web service. We investigate some common variables and examine their effects on the performance of CICS as both a requester and provider of Web services.

Sur le point de prendre sa retraite au terme d’une longue carrière dans la police du Michigan, l’inspecteur Sunderson enquête sur une secte hédoniste qui a pris ses quartiers à quelques kilomètres de chez lui. Simple hurluberlu inoffensif au premier abord, le gourou se fait appeler Grand Maître. Au fil de leurs recherches Sunderson et son improbable acolyte de seize ans, Mona, découvrent un personnage bien plus sinistre qu’il n’y paraît. Lui-même poursuivi par ses propres démons, imbibé d’alcool et obsédé par les femmes, Sunderson traque sa proie des bois du Michigan jusqu’à une petite ville d’Arizona qui fourmille de criminels transfrontaliers avant d’atterrir dans le Nebraska, où les adeptes du Grand Maître espèrent s’établir pour de bon. Un chef-d’œuvre tragicomique, étincelant d’humour et de désespoir.

Three novellas by the New York Times bestselling author, including the classic tale of brotherhood from the Montana plains through the horrors of WWI. Jim Harrison’s critically acclaimed novella “Legends of the Fall”—which was made into the film of the same name—is an epic tale of three brothers fighting for justice in a world gone mad. Moving from the expansive landscape of early twentieth-century Montana to the blood-drenched battlefields of World War I Europe, Harrison explores the desperate actions of which men are capable when their lives or aspirations are threatened. Also including the novellas “Revenge” and “The Man Who Gave Up His Name,” Legends of the Fall confirms Jim Harrison’s reputation as a writer who “stands high among the writers of his generation. This book is rich, alive, and shatteringly visceral. A triumph” (New Yorker). “I can’t begin to do justice to the nuances of character and honest complexities of plot in this work. The writing is precise and careful—and sings withal.” —Raymond Carver, Washington Post Book World

This collection of novellas featuring the titular Indian underscores Jim Harrison’s place as one of America’s most irrepressible writers. A New York Times–bestselling author Jim Harrison is one of America’s most beloved writers, and of all his creations, Brown Dog, a bawdy, reckless, down-on-his-luck Michigan Indian, has earned cult status with readers in the decades since his first appearance. Brown Dog gathers all the Brown Dog novellas, including one never-published one, into one volume—the ideal introduction (or reintroduction) to Harrison’s irresistible Everyman. In these novellas, BD rescues the preserved body of an Indian from Lake Superior’s cold waters; overindulges in food, drink, and women while just scraping by in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; wanders Los Angeles in search of an ersatz Native activist who stole his bearskin; adopts two Native children; and flees the authorities, then returns across the Canadian border aboard an Indian rock band’s tour bus. The collection culminates with He Dog, never before published, which finds BD marginally employed and still looking for love (or sometimes just a few beers and a roll in the hay), as he goes on a road trip from Michigan to Montana and back, arriving home to the prospect of family stability and, perhaps, a chance at redemption.

"The way Harrison has embedded his entire vision of our predicament implicitly in the particulars of two poetic lives, his own and Yesenin''s, is what makes the poem not only his best but one of the best in the past twenty-five years of American writing."--Hayden Carruth, Sulfur "Harrison inhabits the problems of our age as if they were beasts into which he had crawled, and Letters to Yesenin is a kind of imaginative taxidermy that refuses to stay in place up on the trophy room wall, but insists on walking into the dining room."--The American Poetry Review Jim Harrison''s gorgeous, desperate, and harrowing "correspondence" with Sergei Yesenin--a Russian poet who committed suicide after writing his final poem in his own blood--is considered an American masterwork. In the early 1970s, Harrison was living in poverty on a hardscrabble farm, suffering from depression and suicidal tendencies. In response he began to write daily prose-poem letters to Yesenin. Through this one-sided correspondence, Harrison unloads to this unlikely hero, ranting and raving about politics, drinking problems, family concerns, farm life, and a full range of daily occurrences. The rope remains ever present. Yet sometime through these letters there is a significant shift. Rather than feeling inextricably linked to Yesenin''s inevitable path, Harrison becomes furious, arguing about their imagined relationship: "I''m beginning to doubt whether we ever would have been friends." In the end, Harrison listened to his own poems: "My year-old daughter''s red robe hangs from the doorknob shouting Stop."

With its fanlike evergreen fronds, soft trunk, and strong root system, the palmetto is a wind-adapted palm that can bend with strong sea breezes without breaking or being uprooted. Emblematic of survival against opposition, the palmetto tree has captured the imaginations of South Carolinians for generations, appearing on the state seal since the American Revolution and on the state flag since 1861. The palmetto was named South Carolina''s official state tree by Governor Burnet R. Maybank in 1939, and in 1974 Governor John C. West commissioned acclaimed South Carolina artist Jim Harrison to paint the official palmetto tree portrait for the State of South Carolina, an image that adorns the State House to this day. The Palmetto and Its South Carolina Home showcases the timeless, natural beauty of the state tree in marshland and coastal landscapes in the popular Harrison style. Appearing on glassware, stationery, jewelry, and many other decorative and functional objects, the palmetto tree is an omnipresent symbol in South Carolina culture. For Harrison, the palmetto remains foremost an icon of the wondrous Carolina coastal habitats. Sweeping images of the coast have been part of Harrison''s art since the beginning of his career, and he continues to illustrate his love of the South Carolina coast by capturing the beauty of the state tree amid the many stunning and enchanting scenes included here. The Palmetto and Its South Carolina Home also explores the historical background of the tree and its many ties to South Carolina''s heritage as a symbol of strength and beauty worthy of this artistic celebration.

Harrison, one of America''s most celebrated writers, is considered "a renegade genius" for his poetry.