John Haines: Life, Work, Influenced by Nature

If The Owl Calls Again

  At dusk
from the island in the river,
and it's not too cold,

I'll wait for the moon
to rise,
then take wing and glide
to meet him.

We will not speak,
but hooded against the frost
soar above
the alder flats, searching
with tawny eyes.

And then we'll sit
in the shadowy spruce
and pick the bones
of careless mice,

while the long moon drifts
toward Asia
and the river mutters
in its icy bed.

And when the morning climbs
the limbs
we'll part without a sound,

fulfilled, floating
homeward as
the cold world awakens.

                                J. Haines, 1990

John Haines

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1924, John Haines studied at the National Art School, the American University, and the Hans Hoffmann School of Fine Art. The author of more than ten collections of poetry, his works include For the Century's End: Poems 1990-1999 (University of Washington Press, 2001); At the End of This Summer: Poems 1948-1954 (Copper Canyon Press, 1997); The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer (1993); and New Poems 1980-88 (1990), for which he received both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Western States Book Award. He also published a book of essays entitled Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays (1996), and a memoir, The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness (1989).

American Academy of Poets. (nd). John Haines. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2012 from http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/59.

Haines moved to Alaska in 1947 where he spent more than twenty years homesteading in a cabin off the Richardson Highway. When a Haines began homesteading one of his mentors was an old sourdough named Fred Campbell who had lived in the backcountry for five decades. Campbell taught the newcomer the ways of the North—how to hunt, fish, trap, travel, and survive in the wilderness. Haines, an aspiring poet who would later write about Campbell and the other Richardson old-timers in both his poetry and prose, recovered the old man’s diary after his death. Kept by Campbell on the reverse side of Carnation milk labels, the diary offers a window not only into the life of a backcountry pioneer, but to a way of life nearly gone (The John Trigg Ester Library, 2010).

Fred Campbell, left, and John Haines, circa 1950’s.

John Trigg Ester Library (2010). Lecture Series; Ross Coen and John Haines. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2012 from http://www.esterlibrary.org/programs/lectures/rcoenjhaines1-27-10.html.

This is an image of Haines homestead on the Richardson Highway. Haines sold the property in 1969 when he moved to San Diego. Next to this photo is Haines sitting in front of the same cabin he built so many years previously. This photo was taken from the New York Times web site article titled, “John Haines, a Poet of the Wild, Dies at 86.”

 

Martin, Douglas. (2011). John Haines, a Poet of the Wild, Dies at 86. New York Times. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/arts/05haines.html?_r=1.

Visual imagery is an important component in John Haines poetry. I think Haines bonded with nature in very basic sense when he homesteaded in Alaska in the early 1950’s. During this time Alaska was even more wild and vast than it seems to its inhabitants today. At times I look out at the mountains and tundra and feel like this beautiful land must go on forever. Its mountains height reaching so much further than most of us will ever go. Some days the clouds bury their peaks in swaths of white making them look even more imposing, with no end in sight. I chose to post the poem, “If the Owl Calls Again” because of how effortlessly Haines described the flight of the owl. In this poem Haines is the owl, from his awakening in early twilight, to his gradual decent back to the nest. Readers get to travel with Haines and his owl as they fly in silence yet say so much about the journey of life, our primal needs and the beauty of night.