<DIV><p>&ldquo;The way Harrison has embedded his entire vision of our predicament implicitly in the particulars of two poetic lives, his own and Yesenin&rsquo;s, is what makes the poem not only his best but one of the best in the past twenty-five years of American writing.&rdquo;&mdash;Hayden Carruth, <I>Sulfur</I></p> <p>&ldquo;Harrison inhabits the problems of our age as if they were beasts into which he had crawled, and <I>Letters to Yesenin</I> is a kind of imaginative taxidermy that refuses to stay in place up on the trophy room wall, but insists on walking into the dining room.&rdquo;&mdash;<I>The American Poetry Review</I></p> <p>Jim Harrison&rsquo;s gorgeous, desperate, and harrowing &ldquo;correspondence&rdquo; with Sergei Yesenin&mdash;a Russian poet who committed suicide after writing his final poem in his own blood&mdash;is considered an American masterwork.</p> <p>In the early 1970s, Harrison was living in poverty on a hardscrabble farm, suffering from depression and suicidal tendencies. In response he began to write daily prose-poem letters to Yesenin. Through this one-sided correspondence, Harrison unloads to this unlikely hero, ranting and raving about politics, drinking problems, family concerns, farm life, and a full range of daily occurrences. The rope remains ever present.</p> <p>Yet sometime through these letters there is a significant shift. Rather than feeling inextricably linked to Yesenin&rsquo;s inevitable path, Harrison becomes furious, arguing about their imagined relationship: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m beginning to doubt whether we ever would have been friends.&rdquo;</p> <p>In the end, Harrison listened to his own poems: &ldquo;My year-old daughter&rsquo;s red robe hangs from the doorknob shouting <I>Stop</I>.&rdquo;</p></DIV>