Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Natural-Born Proud, S. R. Martin Jr.

All USU Press Publications

A young man from Monterey and his younger brother go on their first deer hunt with their minister father and his friends. The setting is 1950s northern California, in country where, from the right height, one can see Mt. Shasta in one direction, Mt. Lassen in the other. It is a region of small, insular towns, and although it is a familiar hunting ground for the Reverend and his buddies, not everyone there welcomes black hunters. Father and son both shoulder their pride, and a racial confrontation seems inevitable.

Among the lessons young Satch learns is the sometime advantage of …

A Route For The Overland Stage, Jesse G. Petersen

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The 1859 exploration of the Great Basin by army topographical engineer James Simpson opened up one of the West's most important transportation and communication corridors, a vital link between the Pacific Coast and the rest of the nation. It became the route of the Pony Express and the Overland Mail and Stage, the line of the Pacific telegraph, a major wagon road for freighters and emigrants, and, later, the first transcontinental auto road, the Lincoln Highway, now Highway 50. No one has accurately tracked or mapped Simpson's original route, until now. Jesse Petersen shows in words, maps, and photos exactly …

The Arc And The Sediment, Christine Allen-Yazzie

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Gretta Bitsilly, gin-steeped mother of two and self-proclaimed expert at standing outside the margins of ethnicity and peering in, has been all but eclipsed by the world that eludes her--as a wife, a writer, a skeptic in "the other land of Zion," Utah. Gretta has set off to Fort Defiance, Arizona, where she hopes to convince her Navajo husband, who has escaped not from his family but from alcoholism, to come home.

Over a sputtering two-steps-forward, one-step-back desert journey, Gretta is diverted by chance, seizures, an inconstant memory, and the disjointed character of her irresolute quest.

She is fueled by …

The Centaur, May Swenson

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First published in 1955, May Swenson's "The Centaur" remains one of her most popular and most anthologized poems. This is its first appearance as a picture book for children.

In images bright and brisk and nearly tangible, the poet re-creates the joy of riding a stick horse through a small-town summer. We find ourselves, with her, straddling "a long limber horse with . . . a few leaves for a tail," and pounding through the lovely dust along the path by the old canal. As her shape shifts from child to horse and back, we know exactly what she feels. …

Why Dogs Stopped Flying: Poems, Kenneth W. Brewer

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The solid rightness of image after image in Ken Brewer's poetry was never better than in Why Dogs Stopped Flying. His familiar style is plain-spoken, his humor reliable and self-ironic. Yet, in this collection perhaps more than in his earlier work, the particularity of the poet's insight into the physical world--and the warmth of his affection for it--combine to create an unexpected transcendence. Beasts and bodies are transformed in his lines, and our dim, unremarkable lives on this shadowed earth become somehow more luminous--small suns opening in the dark, small words to the moon.

A Voice In The Wilderness, Michael Austin

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In her writings, Terry Tempest Williams repeatedly invites us as readers into engagement and conversation with both her and her subject matter, whether it is nature or society, environment or art. From her evocation, in Desert Quartet: An Erotic Landscape, of an eroticism of place that defines erotic as "in relation," to the spiritual connectivity and familial bonds she explores in Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place and the political engagement she urges in The Open Space of Democracy, much of her work is about relationship, connection, and community. Like much good writing, her books invite readers into …

Poets On Place, W. T. Pfefferle

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Out to see America and satisfy his travel bug, W. T. Pfefferle resigned from his position as director of the writing program at Johns Hopkins University and hit the road to interview sixty-two poets about the significance of place in their work. The lively conversations that resulted may surprise with the potential meanings of a seemingly simple concept. This gathering of voices and ideas is illustrated with photo and word portraits from the road and represented with suitable poems.

The poets are James Harms, David Citino, Martha Collins, Linda Gregerson, Richard Tillinghast, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Mark Strand, Karen Volkman, Lisa …

Hear Him Roar, Andrew Wingfield

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A cougar attacks a jogger in the suburbs of a western city. Charlie Sayers, facing retirement as a wildlife biologist at a downsized state agency, is drawn into the search for the lion. He gets caught up in the conflict between wildlife habitat and an increasingly developed environment as, teetering between crisis and farce, he tries to piece together the puzzle of his own life.

The Search For A Common Language: Environmental Writing And Education, Melody Graulich, Paul Crumbley

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A stellar group of writers, scientists, and educators illuminate the intersections between environmental science, creative writing, and education, considering ways to strengthen communication between differing fields with common interests.

Rain In The Valley, Helen Papanikolas

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Three generations of the Demas family face the ups and downs of the twentieth century after their fathers leave the coal mines that drew them from Greece to America, become wool growers and small businessmen, and Americanize their Demopoulos name. As the years pass, the family accumulates untidy lives and tragedies. Parents seek to keep their children tightly bound by old-country customs, to arrange marriages, and to foist their views of women's inferiority on their daughters. Lia Papastamos in particular, child of a forced marriage between her Greek father and Amerikanidha mother, pulls away from the stifling burden of family …

Newe Hupia: Shoshoni Poetry Songs, Beverly Crum, Earl Crum, Jon P. Dayley

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This collection presents written texts of songs in Shoshoni and English, with both figurative and literal translations, and is packaged with a CD containing performances of the songs by Earl and Beverly Crum. The songs fall into several categories based on the contexts of their performances, such as dance songs, medicine songs, and handgame songs. The texts are framed with an introduction and commentary discussing the cultural background, meaning, forms, and performance contexts of the songs; Shoshoni language; and methodology. Glossaries of Shoshoni terms are appended. As the first major linguistic study of Shoshoni songs, Newe Hupia is an important …