Jim Harrison: Collected Ghazals

As a young poet, Jim Harrison became enamored with ghazals—a poetic form rooted in seventh-century Arabia which became popular in the United States through the translations of Rumi, Hafiz, and Ghalib. While he ignored most of the formal rules, within the energized couplets he discovered a welcome vehicle for his driving passions, muscular genius, and wrecking-ball rages. The year Harrison’s Outlyer & Ghazals appeared, The New York Times honored the book with inclusion on their coveted “Noteworthy Titles” list, provocatively noting that these poems were “worth loving, hating, and fighting over.” Collected Ghazals gathers all of Harrisons’s published ghazals into a single volume, accompanied by an afterword by poet and noted ghazal writer Denver Butson, who writes that with this collection, Harrison’s ghazals “are ours to witness again in all their messy, brave, honest, grieving, lustful, longing humanity.”