The New York Times is well know for their stirring obituaries, but the one for writer Jim Harrison, who died Saturday at 78, is one of their most moving.

Just last week, the NYT Book Review featured Harrison in one of their “By the Book” profiles and reviewed his most recent book, The Ancient Minstrel, (Grove Press, 2/6/16) saying, “No one writes more persuasively about the natural world, the ways of animals both wild and domestic, rural roughneck mores, hunting and fishing, food, drinking, the writing life and, of course, male lust: reflexive, resistless, defiantly unfashionable.”

In January, he published a book of poetry, Dead Man’s Float (Copper Canyon Press). One of the poems from that collection is now particularly poignant,

My work piles up,
I falter with disease.
Time rushes toward me —it has no brakes. Still,
the radishes are good this year.
Run them through butter,
add a little salt.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 28th, 2016 at 11:57 am and is filed under Deaths, Fiction, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.