Reviews for Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison

The average rating for Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-09-30 00:00:00 KiGa Pride Some poems from Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison, by Ted Kooser: 1. Perfectly Still This Solstice Morning Perfectly still this solstice morning, in bone-cracking cold. Nothing moving, or so one might think, but as I walk the road, the wind held in the heart of every tree flows to the end of each twig and forms a bud. 2. When I Switched On a Light When I switched on a light in the barn loft late last night, I frightened four flickers hanging inside, peering out through their holes. Confused by the light, they began to fly wildly from one end to the other, their yellow wings slapping the tin sheets of the roof, striking the walls, scrabbling and falling. I cut the light and stumbled down and out the door and stood in the silent dominion of starlight till all five of our hearts settled down. 3. Walking by Flashlight Walking by flashlight at six in the morning, my circle of light on the gravel swinging side to side, coyote, raccoon, field mouse, sparrow, each watching from darkness this man with the moon on a leash. 4. I Saw a Dust Devil This Morning I saw a dust devil this morning, doing a dance with veils of cornshucks in front of an empty farmhouse, a magical thing, and I remembered walking the beans in hot midsummer, how we'd see one swirling toward us over the field, a spiral of flying leaves forty or fifty feet high, clear as a glass of cold water just out of reach, and we'd drop our hoes and run to catch it, shouting and laughing, hurdling the beans, and if one of us was fast enough, and lucky, he'd run along inside the funnel, where the air was strangely cool and still, the soul and center of the thing, the genie who swirls out of the bottle, eager to grant one wish to each of us. I had a hundred thousand wishes then. 5. My Wife and I Walk the Cold Road My wife and I walk the cold road in silence, asking for thirty more years . There's a pink and blue sunrise with an accent of red: a hunter's cap burns like a coal in the yellow-gray eye of the woods. 6. All Night, in Gusty Winds All night, in gusty winds, the house has cupped its hands around the steady candle of our marriage, the two of us braided together in sleep, and burning, yes, but slowly, giving off just enough light so that one of us, awakening frightened in darkness, can see. 7. Our Finch Feeder Our finch feeder, full of thistle seed oily and black as ammunition, swings wildly in the wind, and the finches olive drab like little commandos cling to the perches, six birds at a time, ignoring the difficult ride. 8. Spring, the Sky Rippled with Geese Spring, the sky rippled with geese, but the green comes on slowly, timed to the ticking of downspouts. The pond, still numb from months of ice, reflects just one enthusiast this morning, a budding maple whose every twig is strung with beads of carved cinnabar, bittersweet red. 9. How Important It Must Be How important it must be to someone that I am alive, and walking, and that I have written these poems. This morning the sun stood right at the end of the road and waited for me. Now, if you will, read Kooser's explanation of how the poetry came about: "In the autumn of 1998, during my recovery from surgery and radiation for cancer, I began taking a two-mile walk each morning. I'd been told by my radiation oncologist to stay out of the sun for a year because of skin sensitivity, so I exercised before dawn, hiking the isolated country roads near where I live, sometimes with my wife but most often alone. During the previous summer, depressed by my illness, preoccupied by the routines of my treatment, and feeling miserably sorry for myself, I'd all but give up on reading and writing. Then, as autumn began to fade and winter came on, my health began to improve. One morning in November, following my walk, I surprised myself by trying my hand at a poem. Soon I was writing every day. Several years before, my friend Jim Harrison and I had carried on a correspondence in haiku. As a variation on this, I began pasting my morning poems on postcards and sending them to Jim, whose generosity, patience, and good humor are here acknowledged. What follows is a selection of 100 of those postcards." Now, take a glance at those poems again and see if you don't see them/hear them differently. I also read the letter exchange poems of Harrison and Kooser, haikus across the miles, and liked them. Harrison is now dead, RIP, just the summer of 2016; Kooser is not. Nor are Dawn Upshaw, an opera singer, and Maria Schneider, a composer, two fellow cancer survivors and the central collaborators of a wonderful project that emerged out of the reading of these poems. The music is haunting and gorgeous. Reminds me of the joyous melancholy of Joni Mitchell's Blue. Some of the music is instrumental, with rich cello and violin and voice. Haunting and inspiring. Oh, and they use the very poems you read above, in that sequence, beginning with fall equinox and ending with spring. Yep, he started to feel better that year. Here's an NPR piece on the musical project that emerged out of the poems, and sure, you get to hear some of it, which will hook you on it: Here's another piece, related: This is a link to the actual album: Thanks for telling me about this Kooser, Luis Urrea. I loved this so much. With special interest, perhaps, for all my friends and family who are--or who are close to--cancer survivors (which is what, all of us?). And to poets and musicians and artists everywhere who enrich our lives with hope and grace and beauty. The CD of the music comes with all the poems. If I were you, I'd get that in your hands in preparation for the winter, or yours. Oh, and it's not really about cancer, actually. It's about life.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-01-09 00:00:00 Michelle E Menard I deeply enjoyed this collection of short poems. Written during a time when the author was undergoing cancer treatments and had to avoid strong sunlight, early morning winter walks were his only chance to be outside. The poems are short because they were made to fit on a postcard that he sent to a fellow poet. These short observations of the landscape and wildlife reflect the author's pensive mood and love of the world around him.