Listening to Haines

John Haines is quiet these days.

I think his most recent book came out in 1998 or thereabouts: End of Summer. But even this collection was earlier work if memory serves. He wrote some of the quietest poetry I have ever read. Poems, reminiscent at times, of WCW’s painting and painterly poems. A bit like the poem below. It has a still life feel to it.

Haines was a big discovery for me. Beyond Wordsworth and Stevens, he was one of those poet that had me nodding through almost every poem mumbling “yes, yes, yes” to myself. Here was someone articulating for me the deep archetypal resonances I knew I had experienced, and continued to experience during my many hikes, hunts, and endless outdoor encounters. Someone besides The Smiths explaining another part of my life to me. I have never and will never homestead in Alaska, but have dwelled in my own version of humbling solitude. Not as epic as the Alaskan wilderness must have been. The silence of his landscape in poems from Winter News for instance, is a real presence, not merely a descriptive accent. Here is one of my favorite Haines poems.

Listening in October

In the quiet house
a lamp is burning
where the book of autumn
lies open on the table.

There is tea with milk
in heavy mugs,
brown raisin cake, and thoughts
that stir the heart
with promises of death.

We sit without words,
gazing past the limit
of the fire into the towering
darkness....

There are silences so deep
you can hear
the journeys of the soul,
enormous footsteps
downward in a freezing earth.

In many of his poems, the end is punctuated with a sound, a sound that breaks the silence the poem works to create. I know from being married that listening does not always mean hearing. That’s one of the qualities in his poetry I so admire. That reminder to hear, not simply listen.