A Companion for Owls

by Manning, Maurice

• ISBN13: 9780151010493
• ISBN10: 0151010498
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-06
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

This collection of highly original narrative poems is written in the voice of frontiersman Daniel Boone and captures all the beauty and struggle of nascent America. We follow the progression of Daniel Boone's life, a life led in war and in the wilderness, and see the birth of a new nation. We track the bountiful animals and the great, undisturbed rivers. We stand beside Boone as he buries his brother, then his wife, and finds comfort in his friendship with a slave named Derry. Praised for his originality, Maurice Manning is an exciting new voice in American poetry.The darkest place I've ever beendid not require a name. It seemedto be a gathering place for the lintof the world. The bottom of a hollowbeneath two ridges, sunk like a stone.The water was surely old, the dregsof some ancient sea, but purifiedby time, like a man made better by his years, his old hurts absorbed intohis soul, his losses like a springin his breast. -from "Born Again"

Author Biography

Maurice Manning's poems have appeared in the Southern Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the New Yorker, and his first collection of poems was awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award. He teaches English at Indiana University.

Table of Contents

Meditations
On God	5	(1)
First	6	(1)
Without a Vision	7	(1)
The Meaning of Time	8	(1)
The Sum Result of Speculation	9	(1)
A Possible Blessing	10	(1)
Fight Analytical Questions	11	(1)
Dog Day	12	(1)
That I Am Essential to Creation	13	(1)
Schuylkill Country, 1742	14	(1)
On the Whole, the World Is Level	15	(1)
On the Property of Magnetism	16	(1)
One of Many Mysteries	17	(1)
Dorn Again	18	(1)
The Wages of Dominion	19	(1)
A Wife's Tale	20	(1)
Jemima's Idyll	21	(1)
On Death	22	(5)
Fancies
Sleeping in the Wilderness	27	(1)
Shcltowee	28	(1)
Advice to Rovers	29	(1)
A Compendium of Trees	30	(1)
Early	31	(1)
An Ode to Kinnikinnick	32	(1)
A Comment on the Gentry	33	(1)
Ten Things to Say to Henderson	34	(1)
A Study of Heft	35	(1)
Drunk: July 1787	36	(1)
A Recipe for Chink	37	(1)
An Appointment with Captain Imlay, Esquire, Dandy, Rake	38	(1)
Wabete's Season	39	(1)
Considerations: December 1799	40	(1)
A Description of a Dream or Premonition	41	(1)
Amendments	42	(1)
A Contemplation of the Celestial World	43	(1)
Pissing in a Stump	44	(5)
Letters From Squire	49	(12)
Apologies
On Being Raised Quaker	61	(1)
Bad Water	62	(1)
On the Limits of Natural Law	63	(1)
A Moment of Self-effacement	64	(1)
A Syllogism	65	(1)
"D. Boon Kilt Bar on This Tree, 1760"	66	(1)
A Brief Religious Inquiry	67	(1)
The Curious Manner of the Antithetical	68	(2)
Felix Culpa from a Precipice, 1771	70	(1)
On the Season of Rain	71	(1)
"Old Isaac"	72	(1)
To the Discovery, Corps: May 23, 1804	73	(2)
An Apology for Unknowing	75	(1)
The Pleasure of Stasis	76	(1)
Dryocopus pileatus	77	(1)
An Elegy for the Moon	78	(2)
Opposition to Bridges	80	(1)
A Description of a Crude Machine	81	(1)
Notes on "The Natural Man"	82	(1)
On Freedom	83	(1)
Testament	84	(5)
Illustrations, Inventories, and Maps
Feathers	89	(1)
Petroglyph	90	(1)
Small Possessions I Prize	91	(1)
A Rendering of What I Carved on a Beech Tree in Missouri upon Hearing of Gen. Harrison's "Great Victory," November 1811	92	(1)
A Miscellaneous Inventory	93	(1)
An Image of My Foot Showing Blood, Sundry Wounds, and the Ring of Sadness	94	(1)
A Map of Heaven	95	(2)
Notes	97

Excerpts

On GodIs there a god of the gulf between a manand a horse? A god who hovers above the trenchof difference? Not a god who makes us notice;but a god who rakes his hand through the air and makesa space neither can enter. What abouta god of animal innards? Some godwhose sole creation cleans the blood of an elk?Perhaps there's a god of petty disasterwho breaks wagon wheels and paints clouds acrossan old man's eyes. Consider the gods of flintand primer who work side by side with the godsof spark and steel; then there's the god of aimand the god of near death-a god commonly praised.Consider a god of small spaces, a fatman's misery god, who lives in the shadowbetween two rocks and sleeps on moss, contentwith the smallness of his task; the god who bendsrivers, the god who flecks the breast of a hawk,the god who plunders saltworks. I once thoughtone god looked over my shoulder and measuredmy steps, but now I believe that god is outnumberedand I am surrounded by countless naked gods,like spores or dust or birds or trees on fire,the song, the grit, the mean seed of nakedness.Copyright © 2004 by Maurice ManningAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

---

Excerpted from A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of Daniel Boone, Long Hunter, Back Woodsman, Etc by Maurice Manning
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.