Blog Entry #2: The Work of John Haines

          John Haines was a well known poet and what I like to call a transplanted Alaskan, meaning he was born elsewhere (Virginia in his case), but moved to Alaska and embraced the Alaskan way of life.  Much of his poetry was about Alaska, but he also covered a great deal of other subjects, such as "Fourth of July at Santa Ynez" which is set in California, and "In the House of Wax" which is about historical figures.  For the purposes of this blog post however, I will focus on "The Tundra," which is a poem he contributed to the book we are using for our class.  Regardless of where his poems are set or the subject matter, one thing remains consistent: Haines used a great deal of visual imagery in his writing.  Two writings in particular from our main book this week stood out to me as being similarly laden with visual imagery, particularly that of light, dark, and colors.

          The first piece I will examine is "The Tundra."  As with his other poems, Haines used fantastic imagery in this one and did a wonderful job of helping the reader imagine the autumnal tundra that he described.  He wrote about darkness as well as light, color, and mirrors.  Haines started out by mentioning the autumn sun, and those two words are enough to evoke images of gold, orange, red, and dark yellow.  Later in the poem, he confirmed that the tundra is full of blood.  Whether he meant literally full of blood from the hunting of animals or if he meant the ground looked red because of the changing season and time of day is unknown, but the visual is powerful regardless.  With his line, "Frozen gut-piles shine with a dull, rosy light," the reader is able to visualize the mound of animal innards in an uncharacteristically beautiful way since we don't typically think of intestines and the like as being rosy or luminous.  The rosy light and the description of people laughing around campfires conveyed the approach of evening, and this is confirmed when, "the heavy tundra slowly rolls over and sinks in the darkness," and night fell.

This photograph, taken by Paul F. Gill and titled "Fall Color Alaska Tundra"

seems like it was almost taken to accompany Haines' poem, or else as if the poem was 

based on the photo because they go together so well!  You can see the tundra full of blood, which is beautiful in this case.  Photo is from Paul F. Gill's website.

          One of the writings that reminded me of John Haines' work was an excerpt from James Vance Marshall's novel, A River Ran Out of Eden.  The excerpt described the autumn night a young boy passed in a sod hut as a storm raged outside.  Like with Haines' poems, much of this story dealt with light, dark, and colors.  The boy sought refuge as the sky darkened, and found the inside of the hut to be pitch black before he quickly noticed the glowing red eyes of an animal that had taken shelter in the same place.  After his fear of the animal subsided somewhat, he found a candle, which cast light around the small room and revealed the animal to be a golden seal, "her fur like a field of sun-drenched corn."  Later in the story, he described her fur as "fine-spun gold."  Gold seems to capture people's imaginations and the reader can't help but wonder at the beauty of the seal.  The story continued in alternating light and darkness as the candles burned out and were replaced until eventually no more candles remained and all is dark.  In the end, it was the color of her fur that possibly saved her as the boy vowed to stop his father from killing her for her highly prized golden pelt.

Unfortunately, I could not find a photo of a golden seal to share, but this one does

look rather golden and her fur is so shiny it looks as if it is glowing!  Photo is from

the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website and depicts a harbor seal.

          The other writing that especially reminded me of Haines was an excerpt from the book One Man's Wilderness by Richard Proenneke and Sam Keith.  The excerpt was a journal that described the progress Proenneke made as he built a log cabin by himself in the Alaskan wilderness.  It did not lack at all for visual imagery or detailed descriptions.  Like Haines' work, right from the beginning it frequently mentioned light and color and the first paragraph ended with, "the peaks, awash in the warm yellow light, contrasted sharply with their slopes still in shadow."  He went into much detail as he described animals and the environment around him, such as a cock ptarmigan with "his neck and head shining a copper color in the sun" and his summer plumage "beginning to erase the white of winter."  Later on, he wrote that, "The spruce boughs are glistening with rain-drops.  The land had a bath last night."  All in all, I found the writing style charming and feel that I can imagine perfectly what his cabin and the surrounding area looked like.