Spear-Fishing on the Chatanika: New and Selected Poems is the culmination of over forty years of writing by the distinguished Alaskan poet, John Morgan. It opens with a gathering of recent work, ranging from poems of family and travel to explorations of landscape, dream and history.  Generous selection from Morgan’s three previous books, (each of which was chosen for publication in a national competition in the U.S.) follow, and the collection concludes with a moving sequence dealing with his son Ben’s near-fatal coma due to encephalitis and the long term consequences of that illness.  Annie Dillard has written that Morgan’s poems “are strong and full of carefully controlled feeling.  They are tender and precise evocations of the moral and sensory life of man.”

Born in New York City, John Morgan studied with Robert Lowell at Harvard, where he won the Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry.  At the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he was awarded the Academy of American Poets’ Prize.  In 1976, he moved with his family to Fairbanks, Alaska, where he built a home overlooking the Tanana River, with a long view south to the Alaska Range.  Morgan has won the Discovery Award of the New York Poetry Center (92nd Street Y), held a John Atherton Scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and was a fellow at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other magazines, as well as in more than twenty anthologies. He recently served as the first writer-in-residence at Denali National Park in Alaska.  His website is: www.johnmorganpoet.com

FAIRBANKS - I always get excited when I discover a new, to me, poet. Some people like to unwrap presents — I unwrap poems, watching them unfold into pictures of another person’s viewpoint. A good poet can take the most mundane subject and turn it into a lyrical vision, pulling me out of my mundane world into that vision.

So when John Morgan’s new book, “Spear-Fishing on the Chatanika,” arrived in my mailbox, I was elated. Not only was it a new book, it was a poet I hadn’t read before, so I got a double package in which to delight myself.

You may wonder, “How do you make spear fishing poetic?” Not everyone can. But Morgan does, with his title poem, “Scouts Spear-Fishing on the Chatanika.”


Equating the glistening fish with the “bursting” of bombs, this poem takes a few readings to really get its meaning. But it sticks with you — I found myself turning back to it several times as a phrase in another poem jolted some small understanding into my head.

Morgan takes on the typical Alaskan themes — boundless landscape, teeming wildlife, overwhelming beauty. But anyone can write poetry about that. What puts Morgan a notch above is the way he takes the usual and makes it unusual. In “A Little Night Music,” Morgan begins:


Nothing prosaic here. Just a keen, observational eye and a way with words that makes me really jealous.

One of my favorite poems was “Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska: A Suite.” With suite (and sweet) titles such as “Dead Walrus on the Beach,” “A Village Littered with Bones,” “Neighbors: Gossip,” and “B.I.A. Housing,” this poem, for me, was an excellent picture of Alaska today. The juxtaposition of modern and traditional, of Alaskan and Outside, of snowmachine parked next to dog sled, is a photograph of the history and legacy of Alaska.

In Suite 7, “Privilege,” Morgan writes:


Morgan is at his best when he writes about the personal. He has numerous poems dealing with his family, especially his sons. One suffered a childhood debilitating illness that affected the entire family. Morgan writes of that time with all the passion and fear of a parent watching a child near death; but with a remarkable detached eye. He is able to see the little picture inside the big picture.

The final poem, “Spells and Auguries,” is introduced by Morgan this way: “In November, 1993, without warning, our son Ben went into a coma. This sequence deals with his illness and its long-term consequences.”

Straightforward, simple, truth. But the suite of poems that follows is anything but.

In “Prologue: Song for Ben,” Morgan recalls a night ritual every parent knows:


That simple scene is wrenched away with the second suite, “Sirens and Flashing Lights.”


That’s a nightmare every parent dreads, and it resonates with fear, anguish, anger, and doubt. Morgan has captured a visceral emotion and given it voice, given it color. It made goose pimples rush up my back, and I dropped the book to call my three daughters, just to assure myself they were OK. They're all adults, but that fear never really goes away.

This is a poem in 24 parts, covering the extent of illness and recovery, from sitting in the hospital waiting for word, to flying his son to another state for treatment, to the doctor’s angry “Why didn’t you bring him sooner?” to the diagnosis — it’s a road map for a family dealing with the disaster that is illness. Between the worry and the fear, there is the horribly routine — Who will pay for all this? Why am I signing all the papers again? Don’t they listen?

Amazing how Morgan was able to put that into beautiful, simple but complex, lyrical words. They flow across the page, dripping the emotion, but not enough to distract the reader into wanting to clean them up.

In addition to 22 new poems, Morgan drew from several books for this collection, including “The Bone-Duster,” “The Arctic Herd,” “Walking Past Midnight,” and “Spells and Auguries.” This book is crammed with excellent poems. Morgan is my kind of poet — not frou-frou, not overly sentimental or maudlin, just a master of words. I will definitely be checking out the older books, and hope he writes many new ones.

Libbie Martin is a freelance writer who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.


Review: "Reading the North", The Anchorage Daily News (Summer 2010)

This gathering of poetry is the culmination of over 40 years of writing about family, travel, explorations of landscape, dreams and history. Generous selection from John Morgans three previous books follow, and the collection concludes with a moving sequence dealing with his son Ben's near-fatal coma due to encephalitis and the long-term consequences of that illness.



Review: The Midwest Book Review's Internet Bookwatch site:

"The man of Alaska has seen and done many things most others wouldn't even think of. "Spear-Fishing on the Chatanika" is a collection of poetry from John Morgan as he presents over forty years of his work and thought. Award winning work, "Spear-Fishing on the Chatanika" is a thoughtful and recommended collection. "The End": One gray animal walked to the edge of morning./The moon was behind it and the road/wound north, an infinite hill./And as there was simply no reason to proceed/with the project it had set out on days before, it sat down.//Eyes/are all I see of its gray face/staring into the morning/chilled past all desire/having at last come to the end."