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Songs of Unreason

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Songs of Unreason
AuthorJim Harrison
LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry
PublisherCopper Canyon Press
Publication date
2011
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN9781556593895
Preceded byIn Search of Small Gods 
Followed byDead Man's Float 

Songs of Unreason is a collection of poems by American writer Jim Harrison published in 2011 by Copper Canyon Press.[1] It was Harrison's thirteenth and penultimate collection. Sixty-seven poems make up the collection, including "Suite of Unreason", a poem of over 350 lines, and a sequence of seven poems relating to rivers (River I - VII). Many of the poems are concerned with the transcendent natural world.[2]

The collection won the High Plains Book Award for Poetry in 2012.[3]

Themes

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Dogs and birds

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Non-human creatures, especially dogs and birds, figure prominently in the poems. For example, in Mary the Drug Addict (a poem about a dog named Mary), the poet speaks of the ability to communicate with his dog.

... we speak a bone-deep language without
nouns and verbs, a creature-language skin to skin.

— Jim Harrison, Mary the Drug Addict (excerpt), Songs of Unreason

In the poem "Prado," which references dogs, birds and fish, the poet talks about the healing power of a relationship with animals:

I was lucky that early on the birds and fish
disarmed me and the monster in my soul fled.

— Jim Harrison, Prado (excerpt), Songs of Unreason

In "Chatter," the poet discusses his non-human nature:

I'm part blackbird and part red squirrel
and my brain chatters, shrieks, and whistles
but outside it tends to get real quiet

— Jim Harrison, Chatter (excerpt), Songs of Unreason

Death

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A number of poems evaluate death: how we think about it, how we remember it, how it affects us.[4] For example, in “Sister,” Harrison remembers a sister who died long ago:

Maybe you drifted upward as an ancient
bird hoping to nest on the moon.

— Jim Harrison, Sister (excerpt), Songs of Unreason

In "River IV" the poet considers aging and death:

....At my age
death stalks me but I don't mind. This is to be
expected but how can I deal with the unpardonable
crime of loneliness?...

— Jim Harrison, RIver IV (excerpt), Songs of Unreason

The final poem "Death Again" tells us:

Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary....

— Jim Harrison, Death Again, Songs of Unreason

Poems

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Consisting of sixty-seven short stanzas and over three hundred lines, "Suite of Unreason" is the longest poem in the collection. In the first edition, the stanzas of this poem are individually printed on unnumbered left hand pages opposite longer, stand alone poems on the facing right hand pages.

Harrison prefaced the poem as follows: "Nearly all my life I’ve noted that some of my thinking was atavistic, primitive, totemic. This can be disturbing to one fairly learned. In this suite I wanted to examine this phenomenon."[1]: 4 

The poem can be read as a series of short, haiku-like, meditations.[5][6] The first stanza of the poem is a good example:

The moon is under suspicion.
Of what use is it?
It exudes its white smoke of light.

— Jim Harrison, Suite of Unreason (first stanza), Songs of Unreason

List

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The poems are numbered in the order they appear in the first edition of the collection.

  1. Broom
  2. Suite of Unreason
  3. Notations
  4. American Sermon
  5. Arts
  6. Bird's-Eye View
  7. Poet Warning
  8. A Part of My History
  9. Muse in Our Time
  10. Muse II
  11. Poet at Nineteen in NYC
  12. Sister
  13. Skull
  14. Horses
  15. René Char
  16. Xmas Cheeseburgers
  17. Mary the Drug Addict
  18. Night Creatures
  19. Deaf Dog's Bark
  20. June the Horse
  21. Poet No. 7
  22. Puzzle
  23. Rumination
  24. Dan's Bugs
  25. Invisible
  26. Mary
  27. Remote Friends
  28. Poet Science
  29. Ache
  30. Oriole
  31. Blue Shawl
  32. River I
  33. River II
  34. River III
  35. River IV
  36. River V
  37. River VI
  38. River VII
  39. Spring
  40. Sky
  41. March in Patagonia, AZ
  42. Brazil
  43. Grand Marais
  44. Desert Snow
  45. Reality
  46. She
  47. Love
  48. Back into Memory
  49. Debtors
  50. Prisoners
  51. Corruption
  52. Our Anniversary
  53. Doors
  54. Greed
  55. Cereal
  56. D.B.
  57. Sunlight
  58. Brutish
  59. Nightfears
  60. Blue
  61. The Current Poor
  62. Moping
  63. Church
  64. Chatter
  65. Return
  66. Prado
  67. Death Again

Poems appearing elsewhere

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  • "Blue" and "René Char II" (named after the French poet René Char) were included in New Poets of the American West.[7]
  • "A Puzzle", "She", and "Love" appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of the literary magazine Narrative.[8]
  • "Suite of Unreason" appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of Narrative.[9]
  • "Sunlight" published in the Fall 2011 issue of Reflections (Yale Divinity School).[10]
  • "American Sermon" appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of Reflections (Yale Divinity School).[11]

References

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  1. ^ a b Harrison, Jim. Songs of Unreason. Port Townsend, Washington. ISBN 9781556593895. OCLC 709681159.
  2. ^ Brown, Fleda. "Michigan Writers on the Air: Commentaries on Poetry". Retrieved 2019-03-15. His collection before this one, Saving Daylight, is full of his usual rich conversation between the natural world—rivers and wolves and egg yolks, and the transcendence they contain. I'd say nothing has changed in the new book except that the light of awareness that's infused all of Harrison's work is brighter, here.
  3. ^ "Previous Winners – High Plains Book Awards". Retrieved 2019-03-08.
  4. ^ Brown, Felda. "Michigan Writers on the Air: Commentaries on Poetry". Retrieved March 17, 2019. ...this book is an evaluation. It evaluates the issue of death, the way we see death, not death itself.
  5. ^ "Body as Home: A Review of Jim Harrison's SONGS OF UNREASON by Jasmine V. Bailey". 32 Poems Magazine. Retrieved 2019-03-09. ...haiku-like and very reminiscent of the Zen poetry written by sages (often hermits) in the Eastern tradition
  6. ^ Brown, Felda. "Michigan Writers on the Air: Commentaries on Poetry". Retrieved 2019-03-16. These little poems are very much like the ones in Braided Creek, the 2003 conversation in poems that Harrison and Ted Kooser wrote back and forth to each other. They're aphoristic, sometimes, and sometimes more like haiku. They mirror moment by moment the movement of the mind.
  7. ^ Jaeger, Lowell (2010). New Poets of the American West (1st ed.). Kalispell, Montana: Many Voices Press, Flathead Community College. ISBN 9780979518546. OCLC 660034027.
  8. ^ "Fall 2010". Narrative Magazine. 2010-03-14. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  9. ^ "Spring 2011". Narrative Magazine. 2011-11-06. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  10. ^ Harrison, Jim (Fall 2011). "Sunlight" (PDF). Reflections Yale Divinity School: 59.
  11. ^ Harrsion, Jim (Spring 2017). "American Sermon" (PDF). Reflections A Magazine of Theological and Ethical Inquiry from Yale Divinity School: 24.
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