a pilgrim in the void

n ROY HAMRIC: In your twenties, you had Roy Hamic interviews poet Jim Harriso a brief academic career: you were recognized as a poet and potential One of the most accomplished poets in American scholar with a bright future. You had letters, Jim Harrison, lives in Livingston, Montana. ambivalent feelings? Known for his vitalism, elan, and love of Nature, Jim Harrison: My academic career was truncated partly because good uni- he is among a group of American poets who versities are in the wrong places. I only have created work that shares the spirit of Asian feel comfortable physically in rural or masters, probing the mysteries of consciousness relatively remote places. At one point and savoring the natural world. ’ A longtime I fl unked out of graduate school. At student of Zen, Harrison shares the exuberant Stony Brook I was asked by a New York publisher to do the offi cial biography independence of Ikkyu, the loner qualities of Han of William Carlos Williams but such a Shan (Cold Mountain) and the sophistication of project was alien to my temperament. Su Tung p’o, all entwined in his unique American I recall when I was about 25 sitting in spirit which early on was infl uenced by Emerson and Charles Olson’s apartment up near Thoreau, the dominate masters of American nature Groton’s very smelly fi sh business in and “consciousness” writing. He once described Gloucester. He admonished me to only traffi c in my own sign. the thread running through his writing as, “The

individual soul struggling for a life that’s more Did you relate to the Beat generation abundant.” ’ He has written ten books of poetry, writers, or did you feel outside that eleven novels, fi ve novella collections, four nonfi ction scene? You were 19 when On the Road books and dozens of screenplays.1 Movies based on 1. Harrison’s poetry books include Plain Songs, Locations, his books or original screenplays include Legends of Outlyer and Ghazals, Letters to Yesenin, Selected and New Poems, The Theory and Practice of Rivers, After Ikkyu and the Fall, Wolf, Revenge, Farmer and Dalva. Other Poems, Braided Creek, Saving Daylight and In Search of Small Gods. from Eleven Dawns with Su Tung-p’o

9. Late in life I’ve lost my country. Everywhere there is the malice of unearned power, top to bottom, bottom to top, nearly solid scum. Very few can read or write. Lucky for me we winter in this bamboo thicket near a creek with three barrels of bird food. With fi rst light things seem a little better.

10. Don’t probe your brain’s sore tooth in the dark. Let your mind drift to the mountains where migrants are doubtless freezing on the coldest night of the year. The dogs found a nest beneath the roots of a big sycamore tipped over in July’s fl ood. The ashes of a tiny fi re, an empty water bottle, a pop-top can of beans scorched by the coals. These dangerous people whom we’re being taught to hate like the Arabs.

appeared in 1957. Actual infl uence is another matter. are quite hopeless. It sleepily exists in Well, at 19 I felt a certain sympathy There were so many I have no idea. the American literary canon and then with Beat writers. I was a restless soul I was in my teens when Ezra Pound I suppose it gradually emerges, as it and did a great deal of hitchhiking turned me to the Orientals and they did in my own family. It’s notable that around America. I was lucky to have never left me. both Emerson and Thoreau strike me talked with Kerouac several evenings as so Oriental. When I was studying at the Five Spot in New York right How infl uential were Emerson and the Haida Indians I noted that their after On the Road appeared. I don’t Thoreau? liturgy was obviously pre-Buddhist suppose I was ever part of any “scene” Emerson and Thoreau were curiously Chinese. I’ve often wondered at the as such. enough part of our big family in my fact that so many of our western childhood. My father was obsessed natives came over the Aleutian land How did the poetry of Jack Kerouac, with Thoreau though he treated him bridge and that this liturgy has become Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg affect with some humor. Nothing has more part of the land. This is a spooky and you, in your formative stage and later ill-equipped me for modern life than not-really-rational idea, but then even as a mature poet? my early study of Emerson. I wrote Karl Jung believed that our dreams I read all the work of Kerouac, Snyder, in a recent comic novel, The English emerge from the landscape. and Ginsberg early on and continued Major, that Emerson ought to have a to keep up with them. Kerouac product warning label on his books. You often quote Lawrence, who said, and Ginsberg waned for me but How do you work for SONY if you’ve “The only aristocracy that matters is Snyder had staying power likely for studied Emerson? Well, I did in that of consciousness.” Emerson and temperamental reasons, a similarity in Hollywood in a schizophrenic stage of Dogen both talked about kindling the backgrounds. For instance yesterday my life. mind, the “mind on fi re.” in the mountains I saw seven very wild Yes, I suspect that D.H. Lawrence, bighorn sheep. I felt intense pleasure. Do you think there’s suffi cient Emer-son and Dogen were talking appreciation of Emerson and Thoreau about the same thing. The Lawrence Which earlier poets most infl uenced –– the way they established what is quote is kind of a koan. Ultimately you and how? really an American dharma esthetic everything is led by mind, and I’ve always been an obsessive reader of based on a “consciousness practice” Lawrence was pointing out that world poetry since the age of 14. Early and deep relationship with Nature? consciousness is about all that we obsessions were Whitman, Rilke, and I of course don’t think there’s a can own. I think of Lawrence as a Lorca, and the French Symbolists, suffi cient appreciation of Emerson relentless reminder that time is short, especially Baudelaire and Rimbaud. and Thoreau, but then such things so why limit our consciousness?

70 | Kyoto Journal 73 Kyoto Journal 73 | 71 Your actual writing method shares write haiku in English so we certainly that the self gets in the way except as similarities with Ginsberg’s and didn’t call them that. I have no interest a literary construct, a form for the Kerouac’s idea of “fi rst thought, best in nationalistic aspects of poetry. It voice. thought,” right? The story is that you reminds me of the Tennyson-Kipling wrote Legends of the Fall straight foghorn. Kooser is one of the best-read Who are your favorite Chinese and through in nine days and only revised poets I have ever met and I suppose we Japanese poets? one sentence. Do you try to use that were sharing the infl uence of Japanese I don’t have favorite poets per se. I technique in both fi ction and poetry? and Chinese poets in our lives. have hundreds that I read with interest Well, I’m quite different from Ginsberg and full attention. This morning and Kerouac. Yes, Legends of the Fall There’s a greater taste of Zen and on waking I was reading Jon-athan came in one piece, but I had brooded Chinese poetry in your last four poetry Chaves exquisite work on Yang Wan- about the story for a decade. I think books, which cover a 22-year period. Li, and also Norman Waddell’s fi ne of my mind as an “image bank”, from Your stance seems to come from a new book on Baisao. Of course certain which I draw. Consequently the actual more moment-to-moment, centered poets have overwhelmed me whether composition time might be relatively voice with a “letting go” feeling akin to Ikkyu or in recent years Su Tung-p’o. short because the novel is essentially the wisdom of old hermits. written in my brain. We have to keep We shrink into what we truly are I’d like to talk about your Zen practice; remembering that Wallace Stevens with age. For instance in the late specifi cally some events that were said “Technique is the proof of ser- work of Antonio Machado you could instrumental in leading you to where iousness.” If I have spent 50 years as pass some poems off as Oriental. We you are today. First, what books most a writer, presumably I know how to gather ourselves then disperse the infl uenced your Zen practice early on? write, so when lightning strikes I’m non-essential parts. My reading of My Zen practice is a total hoax though immediately capable of rendering the Dogen was ill-digested because of my I’ve been involved nearly forty years. lightning... limitations but I came to understand I’m just a poet and a novelist. My fi rst germinal infl uences were D. T. Suzuki, You once said, “The gift of fi ction is to the scholar, and Suzuki Roshi’s Zen make life live itself.” What is the gift of Mind, Beginner’s Mind. poetry? From Braided Creek …I think it was Heidegger who said Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser Who were the people who infl uenced that poetry is not elevated common (US poet laureate) you in the early stages? speech, common speech is poetry in The problem was that I lived far severe decline. I recall in Julian Jaynes’ Only today from any zendo and early on had book on the mind, people used to little traveling money. My infl uences I heard think they were actually talking to the were friends Dan Gerber and Bob gods, with no irony attached. Rilke the river Watkins who were students of Sensei said one reason we write poems is to within the river. Kobun Chino, and later Jack Turner, keep the gods alive. The gift of poetry a student of Aitken Roshi and Nelson is that it is the fi rst and most primal ’ Foster.2 Also my friendship with Peter art form, which gathers together our Matthiessen, which began to burgeon most valuable feelings. in the ‘60s along with my friendship An empty boat with Gary Snyder. All along the There’s a branch of American poetry will volunteer for anything. way the critical factor was reading with a strong kinship to Asian poetry the translations of Burton Watson, and sensibilities, in the tradition of the ’ Cid Corman, Willis Barnstone, Red Buddhist poets of China and Japan. Pine, Rexroth, Sam Hamill, or early The U.S. is several countries. There is anthologies like White Pony, or I have used up more than the eastern seaboard with its peculiar Sunfl ower Splendor and fi nally the geopieties, but in the Midwest (Bly 20,000 days waiting to see brilliant The Roaring Stream edited by and his wonderful crew) and the west what the next would bring. Nelson Foster and Jack Shoemaker. the traditions of Japanese and Chinese poetry are everywhere apparent. ’ What was your relationship with your teacher Sensei Kobun Chino like? You and Ted Kooser produced a terrifi c I don’t think I met with Sensei Kobun book of short, pungent poems, Braided Today a pink rose in a vase Chino more than a half dozen times. Creek, an exchange of Asian fl avored on the table. I think Kobun was amused by my poetry equal to anything in China or Tomorrow petals. general disrepair. Of all the Zen men Japan. Each poem is anonymous. I’ve met Kobun had the most intricate Braided Creek is partly a testament and conclusive understanding of liter- against personality which becomes 2. Sensi Kobun Chino was a Soto Zen Master who founded ature. He gave me a medallion of the Hokoji Zendo in Taos, New Mexico. He drowned in a tiresome in-deed, a Romantic throw- pond in 2002 in Switzerland while trying to save the life Achala because I kept falling off the back. I care for the poem, not who of his daughter, Maya, who also drowned. Harrison has log into the fi re, crawling back on the a cabin in New Mexico where he lives during the winter wrote it. Of course you can’t actually months. log, and then falling back into the fi re

72 | Kyoto Journal 73 Kyoto Journal 73 | 73 several times when thinking about From Ikkyu women or food.

29 Ikkyu is your most overtly Zennish Th e four seasons, the ten oaths, the nine colors poetry. Ikkyu, in his own time, in fact, three vowels shared your sensibilities in regard to that stretch forth their paltry hands to the seven throwing out orthodoxy and cant. fl avors With Ikkyu I was only having a conver- And the one money, the offi cial parody of prayer. sation with an ancient friend whose Up on this mountain, stumbling on talus, on the spirit paid an extended visit. I can’t maintain interest in any institution, north face Zen or otherwise. I’m a mammal not there is snow, and on the south, buds of pink fl owers. a citizen.

54 Your new book In Search of Small Th is morning I felt strong and jaunty in my mail Gods is a continuation of these order themes. Does poetry come to you Israeli commando trousers. Up at Hard Luck Ranch easier now? I spoke In In Search of Small Gods the actual to the ravens in baritone, fed the cats with manly writing was peculiar. I fi gured out gestures. that riding on planes was bad for my poetry so I didn’t do it for fi ve months Acacia thorns can’t penetrate these mighty pants, during which most of the book was then out composed. The process of a poem is by the corral the infant pup began to weep, always harrowing. Wang Wei said abandoned. something to the effect that who In an instant I became another of the Earth’s billion sad knows what causes the opening and mothers. closing of the door?

In your teens, you overfl owed with again. I still fi nd myself mourning I’m not sure about regular Zen practice. religious feeling. Truly spiritual matters him and have had several dreams of It’s either central to your life or isn’t. are approached condescendingly Kobun and his daughter as adult and I’ve been dealing with the same two or somewhat intellectually in most sub-adult ravens rising skyward from koans for twenty years. For 25 years I contemporary American fi ction, yet the the lake in which they drowned. I sat had a remote cabin and throughout the critic Harold Bloom says the spiritual with Kobun and Dan Gerber for a full vast landscape I had a dozen stumps search fuels poetry. stick of incense in a snow bank at the and thickets for my daily sitting. We Well, of course. What motive could grave of D.H. Lawrence. had a tiny retarded cat who used to sit there possibly be except the spiritual? on my head and sleep during zazen. Poetry is a calling. It’s wildly undemo- How does Peter Matthiessen fi t in? I asked Kobun if this was okay and cratic. “Many are called but few Early on I determined that Peter he said “fi ne.” What there is of my are chosen,” it has been said. I’m Matthies-sen and Gary Snyder were practice begins with reading poetry unfamiliar with Harold Bloom except the modern writers who knew how and then walking. for his book on Blake. I could fi nd no to live. Every year Peter comes to room for myself in organized religion Montana and we fi sh fl oating down an Walking, or wandering, is an honored so I created my own that changes immense river in a drift boat watching form of spiritual communion for many somewhat moment by moment as it the prodigious bird life. hermits and poets, from Han Shan should. I’m just another of billions of (Cold Mountain) to Wordsworth. pilgrims in the void. You once described your Zen practice Walking tells you where you are. Dogen I offer a small satori poem: as “nickel-plated,” and said you now said “When you fi nd yourself where prefer Zen-fl avored poetry to abstract you already are practice occurs.” The BARKING texts. language of dogs and birds teaches you The moon comes up. As I said, the ability to deal with your own language. I think of reality The moon goes down. abstract texts has fl ed my mind. I as the aggregate of the perceptions of This is to inform you mean “nickel-plated” in terms that by all creatures. It’s important for me to that I didn’t die young. any conceivable test I’m a failure as understand that I’m no more important Age swept past me a Zen student. In Dogen’s terms, I’m than a bird. Walking is walking. but I caught up. missing key ingredients for cooking We’re bipeds. Everything of value is Spring has begun here and each day my life. informed by spirit. The Navajo bow brings new birds up from Mexico. to the directions on waking. I walk. Yesterday I got a call from the outside Do you have a regular zazen practice For truly bad weather I have a zafu world but I said no in thunder. today? from which I’ve tipped over sideways I was a dog on a short chain and now there’s no chain.

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