Lately I’ve been fixated on all things to do with the 49th state. I have never been to Alaska, nor do I live an outdoorsy lifestyle that seems to typically attract people there–I don’t hunt and I haven’t slept outdoors in about seven years. But nevertheless, recently I can’t get enough of any writing about Alaska. I just read Into the Wild for the first time (I know, I’m coming in about 12 years late on this one) and was totally captivated not only by the mysteries surrounding Chris McCandless’ death, but also his vision of Alaska as one of the last American proving grounds, where you can test your survival skills in a place that is secluded enough that the temptation to retreat back to the comforts of civilization is not so strong. Of course, as Krakauer details, the 24 year-old McCandless died tragically close to several possible sources of rescue, proving that the reality of Alaska is certainly much different that many people’s conception of it. I resisted reading Into the Wild for a long time because I assumed that since it was such a huge bestseller that it was either poorly written or sensationalized and cheesy. But I was wrong. I was (and am) truly haunted by the book (Obsession Alert: I even went on YouTube and watched a 9 minute video a local had shot of the exterior and interior of the bus in which McCandless passed away. Very disturbing and not recommended).
This current Alaska fever got me thinking: who are the great poets of Alaska? Not necessarily Alaskan-born poets, but poets who have written extensively about the region? I could think of a few poets who either have lived there or were born there (Linda Bierds, Olena Davis, etc.) but as far as I know they don’t really write about the place. So I did some research into who the great Alaskan poet could be. And it appears that this poet is John Haines.
Haines is a poet whose name I’d heard, but I was unfamiliar with his work. Dana Gioia has an essay about him on his website, which is where the following biographical info is gleaned from. Born in Virginia in 1924, Haines moved to the Alaskan interior when he was 25 years old. He would spend the next 25 years in the isolated homestead, where he relied on hunting and trapping for food, and was largely self-reliant. And this was done in a time when much of Alaska really was isolated; Haines claimed that he could walk north from his homestead “all the way to the Arctic Ocean and never cross a road or encounter a village.” While in the wilderness, he spent long solitary hours developing his voice as a poet. Here is the first poem in his first book, Winter News, published in 1966:
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.
As he is new to me, I’m not sure he if was ever in contact with the Deep Image poets, but his early poems seem very much cut from the same cloth as the poems Robert Bly and James Wright were writing in the 1960’s. Later in his career Haines began to write about other landscapes and topics, but the early poems are all heavily influenced by the Northern landscape. The poems are at once stark and strange.
A Winter Light
We still go about our lives
in shadow, pouring the white cup full
with a hand half in darkness.
Paring potatoes, our heads
vent over a dream–
glazed window through which
the long, yellow sundown looks.
By candle or firelight
your face still holds
a mystery that once
filled caves with the color
of unforgettable beasts.
Much of the literature describing Alaska that I have come across is infused with a certain sense of bravado, from Jack London to John Muir to Krakuaer. The narratives are often about how humans struggle with nature for survival. The sense I get from Haines is much different: there is a deep calm in these poems. It is easy for one to imagine that the speaker is Stevens’ snowman come alive, one who has spent years observing nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Even in poems that acknowledge the youthful attraction to the wild eventually find themselves by the end pacified by isolation. A great example of this is his poem “Poem of the Forgotten.” One could do much worse in finding a fitting tribute to Chris McCandless than this poem.
Poem of the Forgotten
I came to this place,
a young man green and lonely.
Well quit of the world,
I framed a house of moss and timber,
called it a home,
and sat in the warm evenings
singing to myself as a man sings
when he knows there is no one to hear.
I made my bed under the shadow
of leaves, and awoke
in the first snow of autumn,
filled with silence.