A Gradual Twilight: An Appreciation of John Haines

Edited by Steven B. Rogers

Introduction by Dana Gioia

The essays and poetry gathered by editor Steven B. Rogers are a testament to Haines contribution to poetry. Most of the material is new and all of it celebrates the immeasurable talents and matchless generosity of this writer, teacher, mentor. In a contribution, Donald Hall writes, “…But Haines differs from others in the care of his language. He writes with a hard instrument on a hard surface.”

Contributors include Rick Bass, Wendell Berry, Jody Bolz, Raymond Carver, Matthew Cooperman, Robert DeMott, Mike Dunham, Helen Frost, Tess Gallagher, James A.Griffin, Donald Hall, James Hopkins, Carolyn Kremers, Joel Kuritsky, M.D., Michael H. Lythgoe, David Mason, Jack Matthews, Thomas McGrath, John McKernan, Wesley McNair, Miles David Moore, John Murray, Sheila Nickerson, Greg Orfalea, Birch Pavelsky, Tamlin Pavelsky, Donna R. Sandberg, Nancy Schoenberger, Robert Schultz, Tom Sexton, Marion K. Stocking, Henry Taylor, Clark Waterfall, William Carlos Williams, Marcella Wolfe.

John Haines, poet, essayist, and teacher was born in 1924 and died in March 2011. After studying painting, he spent more than twenty years homesteading in Alaska. The author of more than ten collections of poetry, his works include At the End of This Summer: Poems 1948-1954, The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer and New Poems 1980-88, for which he received both the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Western States Book Award. He has also published a book of essays entitled Fables and Distances: New and Selected Essays, and a memoir, The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness. He has taught at Ohio University, George Washington University, University of Montana, Bucknell University, and the University of Cincinnati. He was Guest Poet at both the International Shakespeare Conference at Vladimir University, Russia and at Summer Wordsworth Conference, Grasmere, UK. He was Resident at the Rockefeller Center, Bellagio, Italy and Rasmuson Fellow at the U.S. Artists Meeting, Los Angeles. Named a Fellow by The Academy of American Poets in 1997, his other honors include the Alaska Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Congress. In 2008, Sewanee Review awarded Haines the Atkin Taylor Award for Poetry. 

Last Words on the Poet

He owed his enemies a debt of gratitude.
Enemy or friend, those who could not see,
excused from failure by their nature;
those who saw a little way, by laziness
or habit unable to see farther;
and those who followed nearly to the end,
then in some latent disposition
turned aside before their eyes knew light.

Acquaintance or relation, loved or not,
in ignorance and fear they set up walls
before him, switched the roadway signs
and sough to mine the very ground
beneath his feet.  Some beckoned
from a pleasant meadow, bidding him
stay awhile; and others merely laughed
to see him climb the barriers,
stumbling at the crossways, and hesitate
before the smile and languor of reclining
ladies.  But he could not condemn them,
their fortunes and solace were not his,
and likely enough their hearts
would have rejoiced if they had understood.

They had all served; their walls and
misdirections, snickerings and enticements,
only served to set his foot the firmer
and slowly teach his eyes to fasten
on the troubled slope ahead,
as tooth and claw develop keenness
in a hungry winter season.

Though blind before it all, his enemies
were spurs, through that perhaps
his friends; and those who turned away
disclosed the road he was to travel.

—John Haines

Haines is not merely a fine writer but a necessary one—a poet and essayist who enlarges his readers by challenging their unexamined assumptions. More important, he challenges their assumptions not only about art and literature but about life and the physical world. His vision is large, comprehensive, and earnest—ranging from poetry and painting to politics and the environment.
— Dana Gioia

April 2003
308 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.5
$27
978-0-9707186-2-4