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Messages from the Mountains by Jim Hunter 125 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0864; ISBN 1-4120-0495-0; US$16.00, C$18.00, EUR13.00, £9.00 This book is the real thing about Alaska. Hunter has been there fifty years, most of it in and out of the wilderness, where he has become familiar with the forest, and with himself.
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about the book
about the author
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About the Book
This is the third and final book in Jim Hunter's trilogy following Messages From Raven 1988, which won national honors, and Messages From the Bombing Range, 2002 which also gained wide attention. "Less frequently", as one critic put it, "comes a poet who moves across the Earthly landscape with giant strides, his insights into the human condition hurled like thunderbolts one minute, and whispered gently into our ears the next." Hunter is one of those. As in his earlier books Hunter takes his readers not just into the wildest and most dangerous of Alaska's northern places, but also into the wilds of their own hearts. Places which they may not have intended to visit, but in this book may joy in discovering! It will prove an exciting journey, for those willing to embark upon it; to read what messages in this century the mountains, via Jim Hunter's keen and dedicated eye, are so clearly sending us.
Also by Jim Hunter Messages from the Bombing Range
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Reader's comments about the Jim Hunter's poems
Jim Hunter's poems have struck an important and universal chord in the hearts of many Americans. "And that is what I aim for," Hunter said in a recent interview. "I want my poems to knock people down. I want to hammer people, not pet their fur. These are blue collar poems. Their hands are dirty, but their hearts are clean. They come right at you." So stand back.
"These poems capture the gusto of those who love Alaska beyond streets and phones and desks...",
Anchorage Times.
"...America's leading wilderness poet."
E-Bay
"Charming, educated and natural..." Messages From Raven in Envoy.
"If Not For The Owl At Night...strikes me as a perfect poem."
Tom Sexton Sexton, Alaska Poet Laureate
"He took me to the wilderness...couldn't help but feel both the healing and vast aloneness of the wilds."
Robin W. Westerville, OH.
Messages From The Bombing Range
"...read and digested each poem like a good meal for the soul."
Phylllis T. Highland, CA.
"Honest prose, excellent style."
Mark M. Rock Point, AZ
"Captures the still vastness of winter...the fragility of life on the tundra...solitude at the top of the world...stark...a great volume."
Ryan M. Pacific Grove, CA.
"...beautiful...lyrical...I could smell the trees...felt the anguish and pain of learning..."
Patricia M. Fort Worth, TX
"Too short...wanted to read more of these inspirational words."
"Messages From The Bombing Range"
Valarie T. London, ON Canada Canada.
"...these poems come from the heart...nothing in the book I did not like."
Kristine N. E. Falmouth, MA
"Thoroughly enjoyed reading...thought provoking...well written...I wanted more of it. BUY THE BOOK!"
Tom M. Brooki Brookings, OR
"I love the poetry. Wonderful stories...an unexpected pleasure...wished it was longer."
Linda E. Wrens, GA
"This book has great enthuiasm and energy...enchants with its melodic rhythms."
Adam H. Louisville, KY
"Amazing images...the author put himself into these poems."
Casey K. South Beach, OR
"Wonderful descriptions...made you feel like you were there."
Kristina C. Huntersville, NC
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About the Author
Born in Stockton, California in 1937 Jim Hunter arrived in Alaska in 1955 at eighteen years of age. He served four years as an Air Force radar operator, graduated from San Francisco State College in 1963 with a degree in Creative Writing. He worked as a pizza cook, prison guard, newspaper reporter, psychiatric technician, substitute teacher, and radio announcer before returning to Fairbanks in 1966. Hunter has published over 100 articles on Alaska, Mexico, and the western U. S. In 1976 Chronicle Books of San Francisco published his widely acclaimed guide to Mexico's Baja Peninsula, OFFBEAT BAJA. His first book of poetry, Messages From Raven, placed among a select group of finalists in the 1987 NEW LETTERS LITERARY AWARDS sponsored by the University of Missouri. In 2002 Hunter published the second book in this trilogy, Messages From The Bombing Range, which also received high praise from around the United States. Hunter has worked in Alaska for many years as an insurance adjuster. In 1985 he and Marilyn J. Mount, a counselor in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, were married. In 2004 Hunter's exciting novel, Mike, Charley and Wolf, a story of life in Alaska's wilderness will be published. Alternating between a remote cabin in the Alaska Range Mountains south of Fairbanks and their home in town, Jim and Marilyn Hunter continue to live and to work in Alaska's still wild Interior.
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Excerpts
"The Red Fox" is Hunter at his best with vivid description of the harsh climate of the Alaska Range where the temperatures sometimes fall to fifty degrees below zero and stay there for days while wind-whipped snow blinds anything trying to move, man or animal.
So I found myself in a fireless cauldron
like a great white pot
not of heat
but of cold.
For on that day it was twenty below
and the day before forty
and even as it warmed
each of us who dared movement:
moose men mice machines
wolves and falling snow flakes
risked our precious energy risked all in fact.
But alone, with nothing but the clothing on his back and some bare subsistence gear, he does move, every hour a fight against the killing temperature, every movement making him the potential target of wolves or other predators. Until he finds on a high remote ridge, a red fox guarding her den of kits.
I Said Good Good-bye. I Stepped Aboard Aboard.
I was thinking recently of war
and those who leave,
disappear like mist,
between morning
and what's left of life
just evaporate.
Those behind suffer
and those who have never left
or waited
might wonder
in some detail
just how is it accomplished
this going to war?
The leaving, that is.
Do you go the day before?
Do you join a group of people
to some black place?
Is it silver armor you wear
before the fact
or only there
at the front?
Do they take you in the morning
or in the evening?
What do loved ones do
when last you touch them?
Do they shake later
or then?
Do they cry at all?
Or flow around hysterically
in the empty house?
How do those who leave
become groups
squads
squadrons?
How are they organized?
Who tells them what to do?
Arms them?
Says who to kill
and why
and when?
Who will lead them
all these young men
young women
succor them
say to halt
be at attention
march
get down,
shoot?
Get shot at?
Who will give them last rights
help them die
stop their bleeding
nurse them back?
But I have drifted
from the leaving,
perhaps the hardest part.
So how do we leave?
It was in the dark
when I did it perfectly
as have others
as if ordained.
I achieved it I suppose
the same way others must
on a cold day before dawn
gray with valley rain
near fifty years ago
in a Stockton bus station
with a young woman
who would be mine
who married
before I was home again.
Parents were a step behind
faces as serious as stone
with the sadness
and the glory of it just below,
the dead weight of generations,
which drove us all down
drove us all off to war again.
I said good-bye.
I stepped aboard in December 54.
Fairbanks.
09-28-02
The Chess Games
I played chess all day
today
to exhaustion with four people:
two lawyers;
a tall
Chinese immigrant
from Hong Kong;
a 300 pound computer hacker,
and opened as usual
with each of them
with the Portuguese defense
which is
come out with a club in each hand
attacking
swinging
never backing up
and of course
I won.
Once.
Fairbanks.
10-25-02
Death by Lead
The newspaper carries the headline
someone else the grief
many in fact
as I drive down airport way
alive and wondering what particular
disease it was
feeling badly about that,
but human
for wondering about those things
knowing catholic
I should stop the car and get out
get down on my knees
and pray for his soul
instead of wondering or caring
in which of the many ways
his body had failed him
so that he sinned
committed death by lead,
shot himself in the head,
being human,
outside I prayed,
for his forgiveness.
Fairbanks.
01-19-03
Catalogue Information
