Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
Award-winning Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan explores her lifelong love of the living world and all its inhabitants.\ "We want to live as if there is no other place," Hogan tells us, "as if we will always be here. We want to live with devotion to the world of waters and the universe of life." In offering praise to sky, earth, water, and animals, she calls us to witness how each living thing is alive in a conscious world with its own integrity, grace, and dignity.\ In Dwellings, Hogan...
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Award-winning Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan explores her lifelong love of the living world and all its inhabitants. Publishers Weekly Novelist (Mean Spirit) and poet (Seeing Through the Sun) Hogan branches into nonfiction with this slender volume of meditations on the natural world. She successfully couples a poet's appreciation of phrasing and rhythm with Native American sensibilities and stories. Throughout, Hogan exquisitely examines both natural and internal landscapes. She writes beautifully about animals without anthropomorphizing them and, in so doing, explores what it means to be human. Herself a Chickasaw, Hogan is able to bring a diverse cultural perspective to her analysis of how people relate to nature. She concludes, ``We must wonder what of value can ever be spoken from lives that are lived outside of life, without a love or respect for the land and other lives.'' Although 11 of the 16 essays have been previously published, they come together to form an invigorating whole. Author tour. (Aug.)
October 6, 1992: Seattle, Looking for Mount Rainier17and the fields inside it21My mother in the four by seven22No. No doubt23They were kissing the corn god, you say?24But no again: my mother's kiss25October 26, 1991: Outside Saratoga Springs29October 29, 1991: 4 PM, outside Saratoga Springs30December 21, 1991: Berkeley Solstice31January 30, 1992: On the Beach at Santa Barbara32February 11, 1992: At the Art Institute of Chicago34April 17, 1992: The Good Friday Spell, by the Pacific36May 3, 1992: On the Surface38May 15, 1992: On the Road Again, 101 N, Listening to C & W40May 22, 1992: Wagner's Birthday42June 11, 1992: Nursing Home, Framingham, Mass.44June 15, 1992: Widow's Walk, Harpswell, Maine46All night, every night, those old stones51In a battered Volvo, driving through the German Colony53We poke through the 2000-year-old storerooms54I confess: I hate religion55The head of the eggplant cracks open56We quarrel in our California kitchen, eating porkchops57By the Dead Sea, its turquoise scales58I'm not who I am. Bless you!59Beyond the archaic bathhouse, the storage room, the60And what about the mysteries of Cana?61What about, as our son put it, the absolute62The shadows of the Church63Mount Scopus. A lavish lunch at the university64September 5, 1992: New Hampshire, under the Woods69September 7, 1992: Labor Day in the Woods, outside Peterborough70September 10, 1992: Picking Wildflowers in New Hampshire71November 26, 1992: Thanksgiving at the Sea Ranch, Contemplating Metempsychosis73The Nature of Water77The Water Goddess79The Character of Water81The Ice Cubes83Hard Water85Brine87The Water Table89The Lake90Rain91March 14, 1993: Berkeley: Trying Not to Think of a White Bear95March 22, 1993: Puerto Vallarta, Sierra Madre/Baya de Los Banderos97Spring Equinox, 1993: Puerto Vallarta, Playa de Los Muertos98Calla Lilies101December 1, 1993: Paris, Looking at Monet107February 11, 1994: Berkeley, Anniversary Waltz Again109February 14, 1994: At the Point Reyes Lighthouse111
\ Publishers Weekly\ - Publisher's Weekly\ Novelist (Mean Spirit) and poet (Seeing Through the Sun) Hogan branches into nonfiction with this slender volume of meditations on the natural world. She successfully couples a poet's appreciation of phrasing and rhythm with Native American sensibilities and stories. Throughout, Hogan exquisitely examines both natural and internal landscapes. She writes beautifully about animals without anthropomorphizing them and, in so doing, explores what it means to be human. Herself a Chickasaw, Hogan is able to bring a diverse cultural perspective to her analysis of how people relate to nature. She concludes, ``We must wonder what of value can ever be spoken from lives that are lived outside of life, without a love or respect for the land and other lives.'' Although 11 of the 16 essays have been previously published, they come together to form an invigorating whole. Author tour. (Aug.)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalDwellings is Chickasaw Indian poet and novelist Hogan's (The Book of Medicines, LJ 7/93) first book of nonfiction. In this collection of short essays, many previously published in literary journals, she describes various aspects of nature and problems she perceives in current attitudes toward it. Hogan's lyrical writing style draws us into her experiences in Central America, her Chickasaw homeland, and her current home in Colorado, showing us portraits of the natural world in each spot. Her strong orientation toward the environment shines through in each section, as she encourages her readers to see themselves as a small part of the whole that is our ecosystem. The pieces come together to reflect the author's profound respect for the earth and prompt us to feel the same. For literary and ecology collections.-Gwen Gregory, New Mexico State Univ. Lib., Las Cruces\ \
