Day

November 20, 2016

Exceptional Mountains: A Cultural History of the Pacific Northwest Volcanoes

McIntyre Amy
Exceptional Mountains: A Cultural History of the Pacific Northwest Volcanoes

By O. Alan Weltzien.  University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, NE, 2016.

Over the past 150 years, people have flocked to the Pacific Northwest in increasing numbers, in part due to the region’s beauty and one of its most exceptional features: volcanoes. This segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire has shaped not only the physical landscape of the region but also the psychological landscape, and with it the narratives we compose about ourselves. Exceptional Mountains ...

Rembrandt in the Stairwell

McIntyre Amy
Rembrandt in the Stairwell

By O. Alan Weltzien.  FootHills Publishing: Kanona, New York, 2016.

“Rembrandt in the Stairwell begins in the wild land of the Northwest, then navigates the complex interior of memory as it is woven into the present. Alan Weltzien imagines rooms where images of ancestors and the “ghosts” of grown children linger even as he contemplates ‘the day’s traffic and the world.’ These poems are often elegiac, sometimes ironic or celebratory, and a pleasure to read.” —Tami Haaland, former ...

Lost Salmon

McIntyre Amy
Lost Salmon

By Scott T. Starbuck. MoonPath Press: Tillamook, 2016.

Lost Salmon is a 79 page poetry collection focusing on the clash between ancient sustaining forces like wild salmon rivers with modern industrial lives. While Starbuck’s first full-length poetry book Industrial Oz: Ecopoems was about the climate change problem,  Lost Salmon is more about his concern for climate change rooted in 45 years of love for Pacific Northwest reefs, rivers, and forest areas.  There are a few climate change poems in the book, but most are ...

Where the Wind Dreams of Staying: Searching for Purpose and Place in the West

McIntyre Amy
Where the Wind Dreams of Staying: Searching for Purpose and Place in the West

By Eric Dieterle. Oregon State University Press: Corvallis, OR, 2016.

Eric Dieterle’s memoir Where the Wind Dreams of Staying captures the emotional storms of a boy, and then a man, who seeks meaning in a place, or a place with meaning. His restless search for purpose and identity in the American West moves through cycles of success and failure, love and loss.

Dieterle’s journey leads from the plateaus of eastern Washington through the ...