[Tim Murphy]

Today I re-watched Legends of the Fall, one of my favorite Westerns, starring Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt. Great film, and watching the credits I learned it was based on a novella by Jim Harrison. About fifteen years ago I got a letter from a Jim Harrison praising my early books and asking me to critique a few poems. I gave him a Deep End thorough critique, telling him he was uncomfortably straddling an untenable line between free and formal verse. That his clunky rhythms clashed with his lineation, his rhymes were bad. I suggested he join the Deep End and get some strong medicine. Never heard from him again.

If this is the same guy, and I suspect he was, because he was a terrific, macho story teller in his poems, I've learned that Jack Nicholson loaned him $15,000 to take a year off and finish Legends, and that the year it appeared he earned more than the CEO of General Motors.

Why can't that happen to all of us?

Strange that I would be watching Legends of the Fall on the day he died.