Invasive
by Jim Harrison

Coming out of anesthesia I believed
I had awakened in the wrong body,
and when I returned to my snazzy hotel room
and looked at Architectural Digest
I no longer recognized large parts of the world.
There was a cabin for sale
for seven million dollars, while mine had cost
only forty grand with forty acres. An android
from drugs I understood finally that life
works to no one’s advantage. From dawn
until midnight I put together a jigsaw puzzle
made of ten million pieces of white confetti.
On television I watch the overburdened world
of books and movies, all flickering trash, while outside
cars pass through deep puddles on the street,
the swish and swash of life, patterns of rain
drizzle on the windows, finch yodel and Mexican raven squawk
until I enter the murder of sleep and fresh demons,
one of whom sings in basso profundo Mickey and Sylvia’s
“Love is Strange.” In the bathroom mirror it’s someone else.


Jim Harrison, "Invasive" from Complete Poems. Copyright © 2021 by the Estate of Jim Harrison. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org (pre-order now)

It's the birthday of American writer Truman Capote (books by this author), born in New Orleans (1924). When he was 17 he dropped out of school and got a job as an errand boy in the art department at The New Yorker magazine. He published his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), when he was just 24 years old. But after writing a few more novels Capote said, "I want to live more in the world that other people live in." And so he decided to try writing journalism and he published In Cold Blood in 1966.

It's the birthday of writer and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel (books by this author), born in a small village in Transylvania (1928). He grew up in a Hasidic community and learned to love reading by studying the Pentateuch and other sacred texts. When he was 15 he and his family were taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother, sister, and father were all killed before World War II was over.

Wiesel survived the camp but he couldn't write about his experiences for 10 years. Finally, a mentor, François Mauriac, persuaded Wiesel to write about the war. He wrote a 900-page memoir, which he condensed into the 127-page book called Night (1955). Night has become one of the most widely read books about the Holocaust. In 1986 Wiesel received the Nobel Prize in literature for his writing and teaching.

Ellie Wiesel died July 2, 2016, at the age of 87.

It's the birthday of poet W.S. Merwin (books by this author), born in New York City (1927). His father was a Presbyterian minister and Merwin made up hymns before he could even write. He studied creative writing at Princeton University and often showed his poems to the poet John Berryman, then a graduate student. Merwin asked Berryman how to know if his poems were any good. Berryman replied, “You can’t. You can never be sure. You die without knowing.” Merwin later included the lines in a poem.

Merwin lived the last years of his life in Hawaii in a house built on an old pineapple farm where he practiced his lifelong love of ecology, cultivating many native plants. Merwin’s poetry reflects his passion for conservation. His collections include The Vixen (1996), The River Sound (1999), The Pupil (2001), Migration: New and Selected Poems (2005), and The Shadow of Sirius (2008), winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Today is the birthday of Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern (books by this author), born in Dublin (1981). She wrote the international best-seller P.S. I Love You (2004) when she was only 21 years old, using pen and paper, writing it in cheap notebooks known as “A4 refill pads” that are found in nearly every UK and Ireland drug store. Then, with a publishing deal and film rights, she became an overnight millionaire at the age of 22.

P.S. I Love You is a novel about a 30-year-old unemployed secretary named Holly whose Irish husband has just died of a brain tumor. As he was dying he postmarked a series of letters for her with instructions and challenges designed to help her get through her grief and move on with her life. Holly discovers them after he has died.

Cecelia Ahern was 21 when she wrote the book and she’d never been married or had a loved one die. She’d just graduated from college with a degree in journalism and was unsure what she wanted to do. So she lived at home with her mother. For three months she stayed up all night working on the novel in her pajamas, writing between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Ahern didn’t do any research for the novel; she said it was “all in [her] head." P.S. I Love You was the best-selling novel in Ireland for 19 weeks in 2004 and reached the #1 spot in the UK and U.S. in 2004 as well. The book is sold in more than 40 countries, and it spent 52 weeks on the best-seller list in Germany. Her second, third, and fourth books, Where Rainbows End (2004) and If You Could See Me Now (2005) and A Place Called Here (2006), were also international bestsellers. P.S. I Love You was made into a movie (2007) starring Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, and Harry Connick Jr. Her latest work is Freckles, due out in October of this year.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

^