Best Essays Nw

by Maynard, Guy

• ISBN13: 9780871143037
• ISBN10: 0871143038
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Oregon State Univ Pr

Summary

In this thoughtful collection of essays, some of the region's most notable writers join fresh new literary voices in an exploration of life in the Northwest from rural to urban, coastal rainforest to sagebrush desert.

One writer loses all her earthly belongings in her family's twice-yearly migration across an Alaskan bay. Another waits by a hospital bed in Idaho after a rodeo accident nearly breaks her father in half. A writer stands on a dune, waiting for the wind to erase his footprints, while another lovingly recounts the simple ritual that marks the end of an era at a mill in Central Oregon.

Drawn from the pages of Oregon Quarterly, the University of Oregon's award-winning magazine, and the annual Oregon Quarterly Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest, these pieces stand alone as lyrical, engaging works of literature, and at the same time come together to form a portrait of the varied culture and landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

Contributors include:
Robin Cody
John Daniel
Brian Doyle
Leslie Leyland Fields
Debra Gwartney
Robert

Table of Contents

Introduction
Foreword
Two Stories Becoming One	p. 1
Picking Fruit	p. 9
Speaking Oregon	p. 19
A Rope in Rising Waters	p. 27
A Circle of Words	p. 37
Another 100 Years	p. 47
Death of a Gyppo	p. 51
The Last Log	p. 59
Get Off My Cloud	p. 65
Migration	p. 75
Get Off My Log	p. 85
Another Oregon Trail	p. 93
Train Time	p. 103
Air, Earth, Fire, Water	p. 113
I Love the Rain	p. 123
Accelerate. Focus. Explode	p. 127
Take Me Out to the Ballgame	p. 131
When He Falls Off a Horse	p. 145
Army Men	p. 155
Finding Frogs	p. 159
Waiting Out the Wind	p. 167
Grass Man	p. 175
Blood Relation	p. 183
Fire Ban	p. 191
The Way We Mourn	p. 199
Salmon Run	p. 203
The Untellable Story	p. 211
Acknowledgments	p. 219
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