BOOK REVIEW: ‘After West’ by James Harms
AFTER WEST. By James Harms. 77 pgs. Carnegie Mellon University Press. 2008. $14.95 paper
By Vic Burkhammer
MountainWord
WVU’s director of creative writing James Harms has published a new book of poems called “After West.”
This is his sixth, and it has me thinking again about the
whole notion of “west” and what it means.
“After West” the poem, the long centerpiece, weaves together many threads of the idea of “west.”
I simmer with possibilities while I read this book — I’m thinking of “The American Adam” by R.W.B. Lewis and how after the War of 1812 an air of optimism emerged in American life…. And then I’m thinking of the 20th century’s air of loss that extends into today. How we deal with that I think is part of what this book is about.
The book cues me to pay more attention to my own here and now, what’s “close to the nose,” as W.C. Williams said, because Harms gives us landscapes, inner and outer, and the day-to-day life with more of a W.Va. flavor than he ever has since moving to WVU 14 years ago.
West is a touchstone for Harms; he sees in it hope and optimism. In W.Va., the West of the East, he sometimes sees limits.
In the title poem, he sends up the central idea of the book: “after west. . . there wasn’t any way to grow the new idea.”
Not only that, but Harms believes poetry should carry the everyday, what it’s like to live here, now.
The book begins with the 40-line Morgantown, W.Va., poem “Pisgah Church Cemetery,” where we see Harms grappling with time and place. The presence of the poem is powerful with its plainspoken images:
They came down to the shore
in wood-paneled Fords, the land yachts
of old, the twin-finned and two-toned,
flared wheel wells, chrome grillwork,
the loveliest fenders since all Detroit
turned back from making planes
to the central task, the business
of business. And then the children
were born.
As a little historic narrative unfolds, by the end of the poem, I see time in the words — centuries, graveyards, moving West and the idea of finally running out of space … the words forever … and then century again, and things beyond our control.
The vividness of Harms’ imagination often addresses places, home in some instances, and these places are reflected in many of the poems’ titles. “Pisgah Church Cemetery,” “Mountaintop Removal, Wallace Stevens, My Son Walt, West Virginia,” “On Beauty and West Virginia at the Blue Moose Café,” “Breakfast in West Virginia.” He tracks the way his mind works, the evanescent thoughts, their fragments, noticing what he notices and blending it together in a way that is apt and is his own.
Harms must have what Winston Fuller calls a “watching self,” catching himself thinking what he thinks. The poems seem to be little movies of the mind as it goes where it goes, across a landscape, whether that be in West Virginia or California, whether “behind the buildings fronting Beechurst, the wooden porches,” or saturated with things Southern California, across a memory or a fragment of history out West or a name like Bob Marley that’s been marinating up there in the noggin for years.
Harms’ poems display an amazing fidelity to the personal here and now, and at the same time to the national history and landscape.
Harms teaches us how to think, in a sense, during these times when we’re not too sure of anything except the here and now.
“Let tomorrow lie down on today,” Harms says.
These poems are full of wit and surprise invention, elements of conversation and riffing off names and dates, the famous Andrew Carnegie or 1910 and the personal, Harms’ son Walt, in a sprightly way with textual collages, wanderings.
Harms has a playful aesthetic. In this book, things California and things West Virginia interplay, Harms having almost completely moved to West Virginia in the sense that, after all these years, he finds much of his emotional furniture is here, now, in the day’s details.
This is a collection in three sections that are consistently witty and capable of balancing the big and the small, the near and far, then and now in a deeply rewarding read.
I think of Larry Levis saying, “To follow my imagination is my only real duty.” This Harms does beautifully in ways that touch off possibilities in our heads as we read. Sometimes when I am far into a James Harms poem, what I thought the poem was about has taken off in another apt but unexpected direction that seems to be just right, and I know I must read the poem again, either now or later. In other words, these poems are delightfully unparaphrasable in their elegance.
This is his most W.Va. book yet. It is elegant, witty, magical, and it grapples admirably with questions and answers large and small. If you’re interested in poetry and place, and how a person deals with uncertainties, you would enjoy this book.
BACKGROUND
Harms has received much recognition in the form of fellowships and awards, including NEA, PEN, Bread Loaf, and Pushcart. His poems have been published widely in periodicals, in American Poetry Review, the Kenyon Review and others.
This spring he is by invitation a poet-in-residence at Bucknell University, where he teaches a poetry workshop. Others on the Bucknell list over the years form a diverse group of some of the brightest American poets ever: from Carolyn Kizer, Maxine Kumin and Wendell Berry to Louis Simpson, William Matthews, Tess Gallagher, Sonia Sanchez and others.
About a month ago or more, after I started reading “After West,” I wrote to Harms and asked him things like if he preferred to be called Jim or James… I asked him about which photo of him would be OK to use in the blog, and about his writing technique, his process. I told him I loved the photo on the cover. What about that photo? Here are his answers:
Dear Vic,
I’ll answer your questions as best I can, and I’ll include a couple of photos here: use what seems to work for you. My wife, Amanda Cobb, took them (she won’t mind you using one of them). And Jim is fine; I use James for publishing.
My writing process is, I think, fairly conventional. I sit down any chance I can with my Dollar Store journal and wait for something to happen. I prefer not to have ideas. I like to be listening to music as I write, though it’s not a requirement. I’ll start with anything: a snippet of overheard conversation, a particularly resonant lyric, an image from my surroundings or memory, a line from a book I’m reading. I assume that if I write something down it will lead to something else. Once that “something” starts to happen I try to keep it going until it seems to resolve itself somehow. In other words, I like to push a piece of writing until it feels self-contained, knowing I’ll revise if for months, that it will become something else, that ultimately it will begin to mean something fairly specific, though that meaning may not be apparent to me for some time (and sometimes not even until years later, after it’s published). I think most writers agree that writing is more fun, and certainly more authentic-seeming, when it’s about discovery as opposed to explanation. Most of us aren’t smart enough to really chase down complicated ideas; the editorial page of a typical newspaper is evidence of this (no offense intended: I read editorial pages regularly). Poetry in particular tends to be concerned with the inchoate “reality,” with those things that are difficult to put into words. An old friend used to say that poetry is the music we orchestrate around silence, since silence just doesn’t make enough noise on the page. Makes sense to me.
I’m in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. I’m lucky enough to be Poet in Residence at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University, an honorary position that really does honor the poet’s place in the culture, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I don’t have many responsibilities, though I do meet with a group of very talented students once a week to talk about books and their writing. The rest of the time I’m writing or reading or attending to the niggling responsibilities that even a sabbatical (I’m on sabbatical from WVU) can’t banish from life. The Stadler Center is literally a church devoted to poetry: the physical structure is an old chapel on the Bucknell campus, and the business of the center is to promote poetry. I’m tremendously fortunate to have been asked to be Poet in Residence, so I’m trying to do justice to the opportunity by writing as many poems as I can. I’ll be back at WVU in the fall, though I’m in Morgantown regularly to be with my family, when they’re not visiting here.
Yes, the cover. I love the image, though it wasn’t my idea. I sent more than a dozen image ideas to the designer (who’s brilliant, and has worked on all my books since the second one), and she dutifully worked several of them into some of the early mock-ups. At some point the image that ended up on the final cover snuck into one of the mock-ups and I mentioned to the designer how much I liked it. She was ready: she sent a bunch of new designs that featured the trailer prominently, and that was that. It does seem perfect for the book, which certainly addresses on some level our changing ideas about the concept of “west.” I could go on all day about that particular theme, though I hope the title poem does a good enough job on its own.
Let me know if you have any other questions. I’m grateful for your attention to my work, Vic. Thanks.
Jim
Poet in Residence Spring ‘08 Stadler Center for Poetry Bucknell University
Professor of English WVU Department of English
