Download or read book Under Prairie Skies written by C. Thomas Shay and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-07 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Under Prairie Skies, C. Thomas Shay asks and answers the question, What role did plants play in the lives of early inhabitants of the northern Great Plains? Since humans arrived at the end of the Ice Age, plants played important roles as Native peoples learned which were valuable foods, which held medicinal value, and which were best for crafts. Incorporating Native voices, ethnobotanical studies, personal stories, and research techniques, Under Prairie Skies shows how, since the end of the Ice Age, plants have held a central place in the lives of Native peoples. Eventually some groups cultivated seed-bearing annuals and, later, fields of maize and other crops. Throughout history, their lives became linked with the land, both materially and spiritually.

Download or read book A New Garden Ethic written by Benjamin Vogt and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time of climate change and mass extinction, how we garden matters more than ever: “An outstanding and deeply passionate book.” —Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much—not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities. Our landscapes push aside wildlife and in turn diminish our genetically programmed love for wildness. How can we get ourselves back into balance through gardens, to speak life's language and learn from other species? Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives—lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short-circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political; it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.

Download or read book The Wide Open written by Fredericka Hunter and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is hard to love the high, cold plains of the American West. They are vast and harsh and demanding. And perhaps because they are so hard to love, prairies challenge the imaginative mind and the adventurous heart. The Wide Open reveals how some of the most interesting and accomplished writers and photographers in the country have met that challenge and given the genius of the prairie a vision and a voice. Their stories are as diverse as the tellers, ranging from fiction by Barry Lopez, Richard Ford, and William Kittredge, to the childhood histories of Mary Clearman Blew and Judy Blunt and the nonfiction narratives of Jim Harrison, Gretel Ehrlich, and Rick Bass. There are works by Native American prairie dwellers such as M. L. Smoker and James Welch and the photographic interpretations of Lee Friedlander, Lois Conner, and Geoffrey James. Personal or poetic, journalistic or scientific, these works eloquently attest to the prairie s abundance in all its human and natural variety, offering pictures as wide open and rich as the land they depict.

Download or read book Kindest Regards written by Ted Kooser and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Kooser . . . must be the most accessible and enjoyable major poet in America. His lines are so clear and simple.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Nothing escapes him; everything is illuminated.” —Library Journal “Will one day rank alongside of Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams.” —Minneapolis Tribune “Kooser’s ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift.” —The Bloomsbury Review Four decades of poetry—and a generous selection of new work—make up this extraordinary collection by Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser. Firmly rooted in the landscapes of the Midwest, Kooser’s poetry succeeds in finding the emotional resonances within the ordinary. Kooser’s language of quiet intensity trains itself on the intricacies of human relationships, as well as the animals and objects that make up our days. As Poetry magazine said of his work, “Kooser documents the dignities, habits, and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance.” From “March 2”: Patchy clouds and windy. All morning our house has been flashing in and out of shade like a signal, and far across the waves of grass a neighbor’s house has answered, offering help. Ted Kooser is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Delights & Shadows, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and is a visiting professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Download or read book Nice Fish written by Louis Jenkins and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, 1995 "To imagine what it means to be another human being is an act of love. These are poems written by a great lover of the world. Everything in it that stands alone, unobserved, and luminous. Solitary people with their solitary destinies...If there's a native, archetypical American solitude, Louis Jenkins has given us its flavor."--Charles Simic,The Boston Review

Download or read book Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey written by Robert Bly and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poet conducts a self-examination of his life in poems that often address aging, memory, marriage, and living and dying well.

Download or read book The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World written by Paul Guest and published by New Issues Poetry and Prose. This book was released on 2003 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Paul Guest's lyricism ranges from mystical to self deprecation and sarcasm, and his The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World traverses a great distance. The collection is able to reference, among others, Godzilla, the poet's disability, science, and much more. The mysticism doesn't really come off as subject matter, but rather how the poet treats his subject matter. In "Invocation to Destructive Muses," Guest writes, Our poet writes for hours in the myth of quiet: / interruptions pile up like debris. Earthquakes happen. / They are canceled. Tsunamis lap under doors. / Sponged up. Beach Boys die. The poet feels bad / but not too bad. This is from a poem where the first seven words are, Be it Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Yet, of all the imagery of violent destruction, the persona of the poet starts peeking through, and Guest's particular talent is taking things that wouldn't ordinarily fit together, and making them work naturally. Other entries into Guest's first book are bluntly personal. "For a Long time I Have Wanted to Write a Handi-Capable Poem" best illustrates Guest's refusal to fall into a self-pity trap. He doesn't wave his disability in front of the reader, he just assumes his wheel chair is part of who he is. With that in mind, he chafes at disability political correctness: ... if I were the militant type, and I'm not, I might join / my brothers and sisters in disabledom and chain myself / in solidarity / to the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven, but they're idiots, / and I'd rather have a super-size grape Slurpee any day. / God, I've fallen into a cranky orbit. The poem also describes failed attempts to pick up women in bars as well as speaking at a conference entitled "Transitioning the Adolescent Disabled into Adulthood." Lines like these do well to balance the collection against its richly textured imagery. More importantly, lines like these, and the rest of the book, work hard to present a solidly original voice."--Author's website.

Download or read book A Guide to Twentieth Century Literature in English written by Harry Blamires and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1983, A Guide to Twentieth Century Literature in English is a detailed and comprehensive guide containing over 500 entries on individual writers from countries including Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the UK. The book contains substantial articles relating to major novelists, poets, and dramatists of the age, as well as a wealth of information on the work of lesser-known writers and the part they have played in cultural history. It focuses in detail on the character and quality of the literature itself, highlighting what is distinctive in the work of the writers being discussed and providing key biographical and contextual details. A Guide to Twentieth Century Literature in English is ideal for those with an interest in the twentieth century literary scene and the history of literature more broadly.

Download or read book Poetry Prose written by Walt Whitman and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Toby Edition brings together the earliest and last editions of Leaves of Grass, together with other major works of the writer, including such seminal works as Song of Myself, I Sing the Body Electric, and Democratic Vistas. It includes an introductory essay and chronology by the editor, Shira Wolosky, Professor of English and American Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. --Toby Press.

Download or read book Native American and Chicano a Literature of the American Southwest written by Christina M. Hebebrand and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies Native American and Chicano/a writers of the American Southwest as a coherent cultural group with common features and distinct efforts to deal with and to resist the dominant Euro-American culture.

Download or read book Hamlin Garland written by Jean Holloway and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hamlin Garland’s Main-Travelled Roads is recognized as one of the early landmarks of American literary realism. But Garland’s shift in mid-career from the harsh verisimilitude of Prairie Folks and Prairie Songs to a romanticizing of the Far West, and from ardent espousal of the principles of “veritism” to violent denunciations of naturalism, is a paradox which has long puzzled literary historians. In tracing the evolution of Garland’s work, the various reactions of his stories under the influence of editorial comment and of contemporary critical reaction, Jean Holloway suggests that the Garland apostasy was an illusion produced by his very intellectual immobility amidst the swirling currents of American thought. His extensive correspondence with Gilder of the Century, Alden of Harper’s Monthly, McClure of McClure’s, and Bok of the Ladies’ Home Journal is adduced in support of the thesis that the writer’s choices of subject and of treatment were psychologically forced rather than conditioned primarily by literary theory. As a subject for biography, however, Garland has an appeal far beyond the scope of his literary influence. The friendships of this gregarious peripatetic with the famous began with Howells, Twain, Whitman, and Stephen Crane, stretched down the years to include such younger men as Bret Harte and Carl Van Doren, and crossed the seas to embrace such British literary lions as Barrie, Shaw, and Kipling. Garland’s fervent espousal of “causes”—the Single Tax Movement, psychic experimentation, Indian rights-brought him into close contact with other prominent men—Henry George, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Jennings Bryan. These public figures form the incidental characters in Garland’s spate of autobiographical works. Yet it is the central figure of his own story which has become permanently identified with the “Middle Border,” that region “between the land of the hunter and the harvester” which Augustus Thomas defined as “wherever Hamlin Garland is.” In A Son of the Middle Border Garland nostalgically recreated his boyhood on the frontier and, regardless of the detractions of literary critics, preserved for posterity an important segment of American social history.

Download or read book Book Reviews written by and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Writers of the Prairies written by Donald Stephens and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of biographical and critical essays on Canadian writers of the Prairie Provinces.

Download or read book Honeybee written by Naomi Shihab Nye and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Nye’s sheer joy in communicating, creativity, and caring shine through.”—Kirkus Reviews A moving and celebratory poetry collection from Young People’s Poet Laureate and National Book Award Finalist Naomi Shihab Nye. This resonant volume explores the similarities we share with the people around us—family, friends, and complete strangers. Honey. Beeswax. Pollinate. Hive. Colony. Work. Dance. Communicate. Industrious. Buzz. Sting. Cooperate. Where would we be without honeybees? Where would we be without one another? In eighty-two poems and paragraphs (including the renowned Gate A-4), Naomi Shihab Nye alights on the essentials of our time—our loved ones, our dense air, our wars, our memories, our planet—and leaves us feeling curiously sweeter and profoundly soothed. Includes an introduction by the poet.

Download or read book This Was 2020 written by Ramsey County Library and published by Friends of the Ramsey County Libraries. This book was released on 2021-08-16 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Was 2020 is a collection of writing by Minnesotans about living through the upheavals of a historic year. The short prose and poetry pieces address the COVID-19 pandemic and the justice for George Floyd movement along with the general political climate in the United States. The writers offer heartfelt reflections on the difficulties and the joys of navigating life during lockdowns and protests. Each contribution offers a glimpse into the range of experiences and reactions that Minnesotans had in a long year of radical changes to society.

Download or read book The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English written by Jeremy Noel-Tod and published by . This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This impressive volume provides over 1,700 biographical entries on poets writing in English from 1910 to the present day, including T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Carol Ann Duffy. Authoritative and accessible, it is a must-have for students of English and creative writing, as well as for anyone with an interest in poetry.

Download or read book The Pictorial Mode written by Donald A. Ringe and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on style as a means of thematic expression, Donald A. Ringe in this study examines in detail the affinities that exist between the paintings of the Hudson River school and the works of William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper. The emphasis on physical description of nature that characterizes the work of these writers, he finds, is not simply an imitation of European models, nor is it merely nonfunctional decoration. Rather, he demonstrates that the authors' concern with description of the physical world derives from the late eighteenth-century theory of knowledge, and specifically from the concepts of the Scottish Common Sense school of philosophy. Recognizing the differing limitations and opportunities presented by the media in which these two groups of artists worked, Ringe traces deeper parallels in their treatment of spatial and temporal relationships. Having at their disposal the suggestive powers of language, the writers succeeded in making of the pictorial mode an effective means of expressing moral and intellectual themes of fundamental concern to the nineteenth-century American. A full understanding of this characteristic mode of expression, Ringe concludes, is essential to accurate interpretation of the literary works of the first generation of American romantics.