Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry
Friends and fellow poets Harrison and Kooser decided to have a correspondence entirely in short poems after Kooser was diagnosed with cancer and, Harrison says, "Ted's poetry became overwhelmingly vivid." The results of that decision are gathered here, and none of the two- to five-line writings is individually signed. Telling whose poem is whose is virtually impossible, and, not to gainsay Harrison, vividness, visual or tactile, takes second place to wit and wisdom in their colloquy. Both men are famous outlander poets, Harrison more the woodsman-hunter, perhaps, and Kooser the farmer-rancher, and their common basic concerns are land and water and animals, especially dogs and birds (when one is perforce in New York, "on a wet / and bitter street / I heard a crow from home"). They sound betimes like up-to-date imagists or haiku poets, pungent rural epigrammatists out of Jonathan Williams'Blues & Roots, Rue & Bluets(1971) and Wendell Berry'sSayings & Doings(1975), or just two crusty old codgers. Their conversation always repays eavesdropping.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved