Shelter.

Harrison lived and wrote on his own terms, undaunted by gatekeepers whose credentials he was only too happy to question. This independence granted him remarkable diversity from superb lyrics to moving adventures, to heedless and bracing vulgarity. For decades he could be expected to pluck something marvelous right out of the blue such as Farmer or Dalva or Legends of the Fall.

I think his extraordinary productivity may have obscured the importance of his poetry: it’s difficult for critics to think about a poet with successful Hollywood movies and a wide following for his prose fiction; but it often seemed that these things were a kind of shelter for the least rewarded part of his work, his poetry. Now that I am myself playing with house money, I really want to say clearly: Jim Harrison was a great poet.

We spend our lives trying to understand our parents even when they are gone; when we lose a sibling, we lose a collaborator. If an old friend goes missing, the world resumes some of its original murkiness. I suppose the imaginary conversations go on but it’s hard to say. It is really like nothing else.

Tom McGuane