I knew John Haines a little bit. He was a great eminence in the Literary would, and I was shy around him because he had the air of a great eminence. We would cross paths at different University events or readings. He was polite but I always felt foolish and tongue tied around him. I did see him naked many times however. When we lived in Fairbanks in 1989 John Haines and I swam at the University Pool at the same time and our lockers were next to each other. Being naked with him didn’t make me more eloquent but it did let me feel that I was entitled to refer to him by his first name.
John had a serious demeanor, with wire rim glasses and a very deep resonant voice. He gave remarkably moving readings and he was well read and astute. He seemed to be a natural professor In the last years of his life he grew resentful that he was not held in greater esteem in his home country. That country was the old mining claims in the deep cold districts near Fairbanks. He was a profit of the unpeopled world of inhospitable country Yet he was hurt by the fact he was not more celebrated than he was.
This is a tricky thing for all poets and particularly for writers who sing the praises of remote and unpopulated places. It may be beautiful work but how many people are there to feel its real power and then sing its praise. John really was a great poet and it made me sad that he ended up unhappy.
I thought of this… and John the other night when Jan and I walked back from the restaurant with two good friends from Alaska. The street was dark and the street lamps were muted stepping stones down to the corner that turned toward town. A Great Horned Owl was hooting in a tree very close to our house. We tried to get a good look at it but the owl remained spectral: an unseen presence. We never got a glimpse of but the call haunted us all the way home.
Athabaskan people from the Koyukon river down to the Navaho of Arizona, all believe that the Owl is a harbinger of death. They believe this so strongly that their children are not allowed to touch an owl feather or dissect one of its pellets in Biology class. Owls are predictors of death. Hearing one means death is close.
Dot and me after our morning walk. Photo by Gaylen Needham
I remembered one of my favorite poems of John’s: If The Owl Should Call Again. The poem makes me sad that John didn’t die beloved in his own country. But the truth is being loved by others is a matter of giving up your own desire for fame. People will love you… or not… there is not much you can do about it. Just as the Owl will call of its own will, we have very little say in it, no matter how much we exercise or diet. We do our best each day and wait for the Owl to call our name.
The truth is John was a man of the inhospitable world… that was his genius. So it shouldn’t seem that much of a surprise that his reputation did not grow as he approached death. A great cold billowed in his words.
I too will die a long way from my home country, and this doesn’t bother me much. Everywhere has just as much nature as the next. Everywhere has the same possibility of love. Everywhere was shaped by the same forces and I am small in their face.
Flowers bloom all year,
in this strange and fertile place. :
death grows smaller here.
Here is a recording of me reading “If The Owl Should Call Again,” by John Haines:
