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Nancy E. Brown
, September 22, 2014
WINTER NEWS is Alaska poet John Haines' masterwork, but if you're looking for romanticized nature seek elsewhere. Haines carves poetic news from winter's chill. His homestead on the Richardson Highway, south of Fairbanks, spread close to Denali Highway, the wilderness road where snowy owls fly low over the tundra and caribou bolt through dwarf birch. As Haines wrote in POEM OF THE FORGOTTEN: "Well quit of the world,/ I framed a house of moss and timber,/ called it a home,.../ I made my bed under the shadow/ of leaves, and awoke/ in the first snow of autumn,/ filled with silence."
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