About this item
Highlights
- In her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes "Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published.
- About the Author: Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was the author of over three dozen books, including Legends of the Fall and Dalva, and served as the food columnist for the magazines Brick and Esquire.
- 112 Pages
- Poetry, American
Description
About the Book
"An expanded anniversary edition of a collection of poems by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison"--Book Synopsis
In her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes "Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published. These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately exchanged between two friends... This slim volume acts as a palate-cleanser, a spirit-booster, a little rocket-ship of wonders."While Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison were an unlikely pair to become friends, they shared an intimate correspondence of handwritten letters that often included new poems. After Kooser was diagnosed with cancer, Harrison sensed his friend's poetry becoming "overwhelmingly vivid," and their friendship deepened through the exchange of brief poems that captured "the essence of what [they] wanted to say to each other." After hundreds of poems were sent back and forth through the mail, they found this volume hidden within the stacks of envelopes and postcards.In her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes "Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published. These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately exchanged between two friends... This slim volume acts as a palate-cleanser, a spirit-booster, a little rocket-ship of wonders."Wise, wry, and penetrating, these epigrammatic, aphoristic poems explore love and friendship, pausing to celebrate the natural world, aging, everyday things and scenes, and poetry itself. This expanded edition includes a dozen new poems, and when asked why none of the poems have attributions, one of the co-authors replied, "This book is an assertion in favor of poetry and against credentials."Review Quotes
"A wonderful, rewarding book."--Philadelphia Inquirer"These little gems prove that less is often more."--Library Journal"There are poems on the natural world, aging, dying, friendship, love, and eros. There is abundant humor. . . . There also is distilled wisdom."--Houston Chronicle"So what we have here is a small book of finely etched verse by two experienced poets. It is something that many readers will want to carry around with them and dip into on occasion. Braided Creek is a vademecum or field guide for the soul."--Bloomsbury Review"This book is superb. . . . Simple in its language, spare in its style, Braided Creek presents dozens of short poems that resonate with truth, pain and radiance. Grudgingly acknowledging aging and illness, the verses here also clutch tightly to moments of good cheer, of life lived with spirit and grit and determination."--Kansas City Star"Here's a book of glorious, intimate tidbits . . . filled with such small yet expansive moments, perfectly defined." --Commercial Appeal"For those who have ears to hear, infinity hums in the taut lines and compact images of this conversation in poetry. Seamless, poignant, and profound, Braided Creek is a book worth listening to time and again."--Wichita Eagle"[Braided Creek] unfolds like a Japanese kaiseki feast, a procession of delectable morsels. It is tempting to gobble them all at once, but a slow savoring leaves one with a sense of satiety and celebration."--Foreword"They sound betimes like up-to-date imagists or haiku poets, pungent rural epigrammatists out of Jonathan Williams's Blues & Roots/Rue & Bluets and Wendell Berry's Sayings & Doings, or just two crusty old codgers. Their conversation always repays eavesdropping."--Booklist"Braided Creek smooths together two delicate and taut voices, both singing in tune to a common good, a loftier goal, to be picked up like the poetry gauntlet thrown." --onthetown"Both Harrison and Kooser show a 'coming of wisdom with time.' Kooser has been diagnosed with cancer, which may in part account for the intensity of the language and the sweeping philosophical stance of these quiet poems by two gifted men." --Rocky Mountain News
About the Author
Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was the author of over three dozen books, including Legends of the Fall and Dalva, and served as the food columnist for the magazines Brick and Esquire. He published fourteen volumes of poetry, the final being Dead Man's Float (2016). His work has been translated into two dozen languages and produced as four feature-length films. As a young poet he co-edited Sumac magazine with fellow poet Dan Gerber, and earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2007, he was elected into the Academy of American Arts and Letters.
Thirteenth United States Poet Laureate (2004-2006) Ted Kooser is a visiting professor at the University of Nebraska, where he teaches poetry and nonfiction writing. His collection Delights & Shadows was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. His memoir, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, a Barnes & Noble Discover finalist, also won the 2002 Friends of American Writers Award and ForeWord Magazine's gold medal recognition for autobiographical writing. He is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry, nine chapbooks and special editions. He lives with his wife Kathleen in Nebraska.
Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, children's book author, essayist, and translator. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, Nye grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio and is the author and/or editor of more than thirty volumes. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Witter Bynner Foundation. She has spent more than 40 years traveling the world to lead writing workshops and is the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate. She currently resides in San Antonio, Texas.