The Write Question

Sheryl Noethe, Montana's Poet Laureate

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Montana's last Poet Laureate, Henry Real Bird, rode a horse across the Hi-Line, talking to people and handing out books of his poetry.

But Sheryl Noethe, the current Poet Laureate, has a different mode of transportation. "I decided that I would be the Greyhound Bus Poet Laureate." And she sits in the back of the buses, "with the fun guys," exactly where her husband told her not to sit.

During this week's program, Noethe will read several new poems she wrote about people on buses, which were published in issue #10 of the Whitefish Review. Also published in that issue, the transcript of a conversation between Noethe, David Allen Cates, and two WR editors.

Find out more about Sheryl Noethe and her poetry and listen to the program on the radio or online.

Thursday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, February 23 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "Underpants" -- by Prageeta Sharma

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:30:00 +0000

My sweetie's underpants have argyles on them and grip his thighs.
O his European underpants with pastel colors,
how they illustrate his unassuming ways.
His secrets are feasts and traumas
and he is sometimes the loneliest under blankets.
His underpants represent the unconscious,
innocent, nervy, and true.
I can't help feeling eager.
O how he is an old man in his underpants.
When he is sleeping he has the softness of a child,
unquestioning and quietly fitful;
I kiss his head and wings,
for he in his underpants travels like a Griffin
to himself, a fabled monster of certain
sadness, when he sleeps it all goes inward,
in his lion and eagle.

* * * * *

Prageeta Sharma is the author of three collections of poetry—Infamous Landscapes (2007); Bliss to Fill (2000); and The Opening Question (2004), winner of the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize, in which the above poem appears.

Sharma is the recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Grant and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Montana in Missoula.

David Shapiro and Ice Age Cataclysm!

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:11:00 +0000

In Terra Tempo: Ice Age Cataclysm!, a graphic novel for young readers, Ari, Jenna, and Caleb unlock the secret of time travel and journey back 15,000 years to witness the great Missoula Floods, the largest floods to have ever washed over the face of the earth.

This daring trio encounters a charging short-faced bear, giant mammoths, and saber-toothed cats. They tour changing landscapes from the back of the mythic Thunderbird and work together to survive the dangers of the Ice Age Cataclysm!

During this week's program, TWQ producer Chérie Newman talks with David Shapiro about this graphic novel, which is the first in a series titled Terra Tempo, and about his passion for making scientific information fun for kids. He also imitates the roar of a short-faced bear while reading from the book.

Hear the program Thursday evening at 6:30 (YPRadio.org) or 7:30 (MTPR.org), or listen online, anytime.

Find out more about David Shapiro and his creative partners, Erica Melville and Christopher Herndon.

Monday Poems: "True Love" -- by Barry Gifford

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:25:00 +0000

Your sickness made me
a little sick, it's
true—-I still
feel it
     Mayakovsky got down
          on his knees
     and declared
               his love
to his last 
          mistress
        a few hours after
           he'd met her
Remember me 
at the hotel
            in Paris,
         on my knees
            in the lift?
We're all the same
men of too much passion
and a little talent—-
    some a little more
                  than others
    We fool ourselves
       into thinking
                  we're strong
           then complain
      the rest of our lives
          crippled by
            the consequences

*     *     *     *     *

Barry Gifford is a novelist, librettist, screenwriter and poet who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and has received awards from the PEN Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel Wild at Heart was made into a film by David Lynch; the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. 
His novels include The Phantom Father, named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Wyoming, named a Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year. His most recent poetry collection, Imagining Paradise, comes out in 2012.

Bonnie Nadzam, author of LAMB

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:52:00 +0000

Lamb traces the self-discovery of David Lamb, a narcissistic middle aged man with a tendency toward dishonesty, in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular eleven-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness, and even comes to believe that his devotion to Tommie is in her best interest. But when Lamb decides to abduct a willing Tommie for a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies, planning to initiate her into the beauty of the mountain wilderness, they are both shaken in ways neither of them expects.

This novel explores the dynamics of love and dependency that challenge the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, confronts preconceived notions about conventional morality, and exposes mankind’s eroded relationship with nature.

During this week's program Bonnie Nadzam talks about reactions to her award-winning novel, and reads from the book.

Find out more about Bonnie Nadzam and listen to the program on the radio or online:

Thursday, February 2 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, February 2 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast

All Indians Do Not Live In Casinos (or teepees), by Catherine C. Robbins

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:49:00 +0000

A book review by Cherie Newman published in the February 06, 2012 issue of High Country News

All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (or Casinos)
Catherine C. Robbins
408 pages, softcover: $26.95.
University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

"This is a personal book," Catherine C. Robbins writes in the preface to All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (or Casinos), a collection of her journalistic essays. Robbins is not Indian, but she is also "not an Indian wannabe," she says, and is "neither 'going native' nor finding salvation in Indian life." Rather, her goal is to document the mistreatment of American Indians -- something she often witnessed during 25 years as a journalist -- while revealing how contemporary Natives are generating new energy and vision from their turbulent past. Robbins does more than simply report facts; she provides cultural commentary through her personal experiences, and infuses present-day events with well-researched historical context.

Robbins focuses largely on the tribes based in her home territory, the Southwestern United States. She begins with a detailed account of an eight-year repatriation process that ended in 1999, when Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology returned 2,000 ancestral remains and artifacts to the Jemez/Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico. According to Robbins, that repatriation "united and strengthened" the Pueblo people and inspired other tribes to make formal requests for the return of artifacts. Another chapter chronicles the brouhaha over a zoo on the Navajo Reservation. Some tribal members viewed caging wild animals as a violation of their sacred relationship with nature, while others envisioned the zoo as a teaching facility for students. "Tribal members," Robbins writes, "debate about the proper proportion of traditional to modern as noisily as classical philosophers in Athens might have argued their own issues."

No single book can do more than scratch the surface of the complex contemporary lives of Native peoples. But Robbins has helpfully provided nearly 60 pages of detailed notes, along with useful lists of books, places and websites -- a plethora of resources readily available to anyone willing to look beyond the popular culture's stereotypes of American Indians.

Monday Poems: "Meriwether and the Magpie" -- by Linda Bierds

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:45:00 +0000

Did he know the one as sorrow, the one
he held, gun-shot fallen, its
remarkable long tale . . . beautifully variegated?

For the viewer, fate’s in the numbers legend says:
One magpie for sorrow, two for mirth,
three for a wedding, four for a birth . . .

And wedded in their way they were—Lewis, the bird—
their fragile union finalized with a narrow ring
of yellowish black just at the rim of the bird’s dim eye.

September. Morning. A breeze
through the aspens, fine. (Five for silver, six for gold . . .)
Two centuries still, until language could cup,

in the binary digits of zero and one, all
it could name. And so he cupped the bird,
and framed in script its glossy frame:

the belly is of a beatifull white . . . the wings . . .
party coloured . . . changeable . . . sometimes presenting as . . .
orange yellow to different exposures of light.

Time still, until sorrow’s variegated wing
would bisect the land, would sever from the whole
each singular figure. Here was wonder,

chipped from the western sky, its legs and taloned toes,
black and imbricated, the shifting tint of its shape,
parti-colored, changeable. (Seven for a secret not to be told.)

The wings have nineteen feathers . . . it’s usual food
is flesh . . . beautifull . . . yellow . . . a redish indigo blue . . .
at this season single as the halks.

September, the little rhyme fluttering above him,
dragging in from the far Atlantic its swift, domestic echo.
Did he wonder, then, why the story closed so suddenly?

(Eight for heaven, nine for hell, and ten
for the devil’s own self.) Why abundance alone
could stop the heart’s progression?

Morning. Nine’s beak, eight’s weightless wings.
Then ten, heartless with promise, sets down
on a dipping branch, the click of its digits—

black and imbricated—beginning
the cycle again: the one and then the nothing
from which the one sets forth.

* * * * *

Linda Bierds, born in Anchorage, Alaska, has taught English and writing at the University of Washington since 1989. She has received several Pushcart Prizes, as well as grants and awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, and the MacArthur Foundation.

She has published several books of poetry, including First Hand (2005), The Seconds (2001), The Profile Makers (1997), and Flight (2008), in which the above poem appears. She lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington state.

Fred Haefele's EXTREMOPHILIA

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:50:00 +0000

The book's entire title is Extremeophilia: River Rats, Timber Tramps, Biker Trash, and Realtors: New and Selected Writings. It's a collection of 17 essays written by Fred Haefele during the past 20 years. From working as a timber faller and a tree doctor to profiling environmental protestors and parsing through his own preoccupations with Ken Kesey, Haefele has followed his curiosity into the most extraordinary corners of the place he’s chosen to call home. This anthology of seventeen pieces of nonfiction gives us access not only to one of our most talented writers, it shows us the unique emotional and social topography of a region. It’s an essential addition to any western bookshelf.

During this week's program Fred Haefele talks about why he writes nonfiction (after starting out in fiction) and reads from "Jesus Just Got Evel."

Find out more about Fred Haefele and listen to the program on the radio or online:

Thursday, February 2 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, February 2 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "Night Visit" - by Michael Earl Craig

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:58:00 +0000

I'm awakened at 3 a.m. to the sound of an owl.
It takes me a minute to find my glasses.
I press my face to the window.
A silver flash crosses the yard.
It settles into an owl shape on a nearby post.
My nose and eyes are stinging.
A stinging behind my face.
Like some kind of problem behind a billboard.
Why would a man look at an owl and start to cry?
My body is trying to reject something.
I have no idea what that is.
The owl is sitting in the moonlight.
The yard is completely still.

* * * * * *

Michael Earl Craig was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1970. He earned degrees from the University of Montana and the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of Can you Relax In My House (Fence books, 2002) and Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006). "Night Visit" was published in his 2010 collection titled, Thin Kimono (Wave Books). Craig is a certified journeyman farrier and lives near Livingston, Montana, where he shoes horses for a living.

Lynn Stegner and Russell Rowland

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:16:00 +0000

What does it mean to be a westerner? With all the mythology that has grown up about the American West, is it even possible to describe, Lynn Stegner asks, "how it was, how it is, here, in the West"? Starting with that challenge, Stegner and Russell Rowland invited several dozen members of the western literary tribe to write about living in the West and being a western writer in particular. West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West gathers sixty-six literary testimonies, in essays and poetry, from a stellar collection of writers who represent every state west of the 98th parallel -- a kind of Greek chorus of the most prominent voices in western literature today, who seek to "characterize the West as each of us grew to know it, and, equally important, the West that is still becoming."

In West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West, western writers speak to the ways in which the West imprints itself on the people who live there, as well as how the people of the West create the personality of the region. The writers explore the western landscape--how it has been revered and abused across centuries--and the inescapable limitations its aridity puts on all dreams of conquest and development. They dismantle the boosterism of manifest destiny and the cowboy and mountain man ethos of every-man-for-himself, and show instead how we must create new narratives of cooperation if we are to survive in this spare and beautiful country. The writers seek to define the essence of both actual and metaphoric wilderness as they journey toward a West that might honestly be called home.

A collective declaration not of our independence but of our interdependence with the land and with each other, West of 98 opens up a whole new panorama of the western experience.

Find out more about Lynn Stegner and Russell Rowland, and West of 98, when they talk about and read from the book during this week's program. You can listen to the program on the radio or online:

Thursday, January 26 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, January 26 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "New Year's Lament, 1988" -- by Marilyn Chin

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:12:00 +0000

A star falls and another poet dies—
in Manila, a stone came down
on her head like manna from heaven.
The newspaper said,
“She was a bad housewife, and besides,
her poetry wasn’t lucid.”
And Ai Qing, sweet uncle,
is three years gone. He bears witness now
only in an unfinished translation
collecting dust on my desk
and a thin aerogram pinned,
flapping on the wall.
Saying, “Dear Disciple,
you must never forgive them.
They have wasted my life!”
As the third world shakes
her tin roofs into the sun,
and the moon devours our Western elderberry,
I sit here on the eve of the revolution
in my inexpensive camisole
(the one that Santa brought me).
The joke is sad and is on me.
I scrawl this invective to you,
“a certain American poet,”
who has licked so many donkeys
that your tongue stays salty.
I will not lay my body down yet.
So, my lutestrings are broken,
and a giant cloud gathers rain over my piano.
The world left fallow will not be tilled—
each blade has been devoured,
each mote enslaved. Those we wish dead
will thrive past a hundred, those we esteem
will be sullied by thirty-three.
And I, once Guanyin’s timid girlchild,
who teethed among the thieves
and suckled amidst the murderers—
I/we today are thirty-two.
As the rabbit sacrifices its tail
and escapes into the burrow,
the dragon appears, loud and sodden,
with a taste of cotton and thistle
in his ever lustful maw. And again,
he shall not have her!

Notes:
Ai Qing: Chinese revolutionary and poet
Guanyin/Kuan Yin: The Goddess of Mercy

* * * * *

Poet Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Her books are taught in classrooms internationally. They include: Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty and Dwarf Bamboo. She is also the author of a novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen.

Chin has won numerous awards for her poetry, including ones from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to writing poetry, she has translated poems by the modern Chinese poet Ai Qing and co-translated poems by the Japanese poet Gozo Yoshimasu. She co-directs the MFA program at San Diego State University.

Jonathan Evison, author of 'West of Here'

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:26:00 +0000

Set in the fictional town of Port Bonita (based on the actual town of Port Angeles), on Washington State’s rugged Pacific coast, West of Here is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience. Jonathan Evison has divided his narration into two time periods: one focused on the town’s founders circa 1890, and another showing the lives of their descendants in 2006. The novel develops as a kind of conversation between two epochs, one rushing blindly toward the future and the other struggling to undo the damage of the past.

This novel does more than tell a story, however, it illustrates a sharp contrast between the attitudes and opportunities available to Americans 110 years ago and in the present time.

“An enjoyable, meaty read — a vision of a place told through the people who find themselves at the edge of America's idea of itself.” –Los Angeles Times

Hear Jonathan Evision, a lively and passionate writer and advocate, talk about West of Here and read two passages from the novel during this week's program.

You can listen to the program on the radio or online:

Thursday, January 19 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, January 19 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "Beside the Road While Our Nation Is at War" -- by Kim Stafford

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:25:00 +0000

In our son's young hand,
borrowed from the ground in California,
five acorns glisten and roll.
"Dad! These could be bullets!
Will you help me make a gun?"

His eyes look up into mine.

"Or Dad! They could be magic
seeds! Will you help me make
a bag with a hole--so
they drop along the path
and grow?" I take his hand in mine.

"Little friend, we must decide."

* * * * *

Kim Stafford is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including Having Everything Right: Essays of Place and The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures. He founded and teaches at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

This poem is printed in New Poets of the American West, Lowell Jaeger, ed.

A Reader's Response to WINTER, by Rick Bass

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:09:00 +0000

I went to a Rick Bass reading at the University of Montana the other night. His books were displayed on a table in the back, and I found one called Winter: Notes from Montana. It just felt right in my hand. It was like a journal, with dated passages documenting his first winter in Montana. I bought it, took it with me to my seat, and became absorbed with the language and story.

The language was given a voice when Mr. Bass began reading. He grew up in the South so he has a slight accent. I enjoyed the sound of his quiet, story-telling voice. He read an essay he wrote called "Shy." In it, he describes shyness as feeling very far away from everything, and this description was so accurate that I decided, “I like this guy.” Afterward, I wanted to have him sign Winter for me but there were so many people, and I felt far away, so I scurried out the door.

I went home and read Winter. In it a younger Rick Bass and Elizabeth, his then girlfriend and current wife, drive through several western states looking for a private place in the wilderness where they can live and practice their art. They wind up in a place called Yaak in Montana near the Canadian border, a valley with no electricity or phones, and just a few year round residents. They become caretakers of a ranch, and spend their first harsh winter there. According to Bass, once he survives the winter he will become a “resident” and fit in better with the local loggers and ranchers.

A recurring theme in the book is Bass’ determination to secure enough firewood to last through the season. He figures he needs thirty to forty cords. He’s gotten a late start so he doubles his efforts through the fall and into winter. He uses his Falcon since the transmission is out on his pickup. He humorously describes one trip where he had wood piled everywhere on the inside and strapped to the outside of his car, including on the dashboard and in the glove compartment.

He cut, hauled and split all of the wood himself. This was a cold, silent winter with no television or other entertainment. Being where he was, in the mountains above Whitefish and Libby, I like to think he had access to some Rob Quist music to get him through.That would have been perfect. What better way to calm the chemical stirrings in the back of the brain that he calls the “winter blahs.”

I think the white quietness of the mountains would get the better of me, and I’ve lived in Montana my entire life. Mr. Bass makes it, proves to himself and the locals that he is a survivor, and finds a new home.

I highly recommend this book.
________________________________________________________________________

Robert Taylor graduated from the University of Montana in 1996 with a degree in Sociology. He currently studies Creative Writing at UM and works full-time for Coca Cola.

Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of "Once Upon a River'

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:58:00 +0000

After the violent death of her father, sixteen-year-old Margo Crane launches her grandfather's rowboat onto the Stark River and sets off to find her mother. But the river, Margo's childhood paradise, is a dangerous place for a beautiful young woman traveling alone. She must be strong and vigilant to survive, using her knowledge of the natural world and her ability to look unsparingly into the hearts of those around her.

Margo's river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to deciding what price she is willing to pay for her choices.

In Once Upon A River, Bonnie Jo Campbell's writing is penetrating and powerful, and she joins the ranks of America's most poignant novelists. About the novel, Washington Post reviewer Ron Charles wrote, "Without sacrificing any of its originality, this story comes bearing the saw marks of classic American literature, the rough-hewn sister of The Leatherstocking Tales, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Walden."

During this week's program, Campbell talks about Margo Crane's odyssey and reads from Once Upon A River.

You can hear the program on the radio or online:

Thursday, January 12 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, January 12 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "A Coal Fire in Winter" -- by Thomas McGrath

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 04:51:00 +0000

Something old and tyrannical burning there,
(Not like a wood fire which is only
The end of summer, or a life)
But something of darkness, heat
From the time before there was fire
And I have come here
To warn that blackness into forms of light,
To set free a captive prince
From the sunken kingdom of the father coal.

A warming company of the cold-blooded--
These carbon serpents of bituminous gardens,
These inflammable tunnels of dead song from the black pit,
This sparkling end of the great beasts, these blazing
Stone flowers diamond fire incandescent fruit.
And out of all that death, now,
At midnight, my love and I are riding
Down the old high roads of inexhaustible light.

* * * * *

Born and raised on a North Dakota farm, poet Thomas McGrath (1916-1990) has been described as “as close to Whitman as anyone since Whitman himself,” by Terrence Des Pres in TriQuarterly. As another critic writes, McGrath “depicts the life and struggle of working people who face the necessity of remaking themselves within capitalist society.”

In addition to poetry, McGrath wrote novels, children's books and documentary film scripts. His most famous work, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, is a book-length "revolutionary poem of the American heartland." It was written after McGrath was blacklisted in 1953 from teaching by Joseph McCarthy for testifying as an unfriendly witness before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. A complete edition of Letter was reprinted in 1997, including all four parts of the epic and making use of the poet's previously unavailable drafts and notes.

Some of McGrath's poetry can be found in the collection Timber Bonds, a reproduction of a pre-1923 collection.

Shann Ray, author of 'American Masculine'

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:56:00 +0000

The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washedup basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions, and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these men. A son struggles to accept his father’s apologies after surviving a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball hoops on a snowy night, hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider skips town and rides herd on an unruly mob of passengers as he searches for a thief on a train threading through Montana’s Rocky Mountains.

In these stories, Ray grapples with the terrible hurt we inflict on those we love, and finds that reconciliation, if far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the contours of the American West, American Masculine is a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind.

“Shann Ray writes about small western towns and their residents in tough, poetic, and beautiful ways. I recognize many of these people, and that’s good, but I’m also surprised and stunned by many others, which is great. Buy the book and read it tonight. You’ll love it, too.”

—Sherman Alexie

“Ray’s stories resonate hard and clear, very much word images reflecting the Montana setting of the collection. . . . Almost every story is set under the great blue steel dome of the Montana sky. Almost every story follows a hard man who cannot understand where hardness should end. Almost every story watches as a lonely woman attempts to love such a man without understanding the anger, the hurt and the loneliness beneath the iron. Think Hemingway or Jim Harrison, and know that Ray's collection is the deserving winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

During this week's program,Shann Ray will talk about writing, men, and forgiveness. He'll also read from American Masculine, his collection of stories that won the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Fiction.

You can hear the program on the radio or online:

Thursday, January 5 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, January 5 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast

Monday Poems: "Kicking the Habit" — by Lawson Fusao Inada

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:37:00 +0000

Late last night, I decided to

stop using English.

I had been using it all day—

talking all day,

listening all day,

thinking all day,

reading all day,

remembering all day,

feeling all day,

and even driving all day,

in English—

when finally I decided to

stop.

So I pulled off the main highway

onto a dark country road

and kept on going and going

until I emerged in another nation and . . .

stopped.

There, the insects

inspected my passport, the frogs

investigated my baggage, and the trees

pointed out lights in the sky,

saying,

“Shhhlllyyymmm”—

and I, of course, replied.

After all, I was a foreigner,

and had to comply . . .

Now don’t get me wrong:

There’s nothing “wrong”

with English,

and I’m not complaining

about the language

which is my native tongue.

I make my living with the lingo;

I was even in England once.

So you might say I’m actually

addicted to it;

yes, I’m an Angloholic,

and I can’t get along without the stuff:

It controls my life.

Until last night, that is.

Yes, I had had it

with the habit.

I was exhausted,

burned out,

by the habit.

And I decided to

kick the habit,

cold turkey,

right then and there

on the spot!

And, in so doing, I kicked

open the door of a cage

and stepped out from confinement

into the greater world.

Tentatively, I uttered,

“Chemawa? Chinook?”

and the pines said

“Clackamas, Siskiyou.”

And before long, everything else

chimed in with their two cents’ worth

and we had a fluid and fluent

conversation going,

communicating, expressing,

echoing whatever we needed to

know, know, know . . .

What was it like?

Well, just listen:

Ah, the exquisite seasonings

of syllables, the consummate consonants, the vigorous

vowels of varied vocabularies

clicking, ticking, humming,

growling, throbbing, strumming—

coming from all parts of orifices, surfaces,

in creative combinations, orchestrations,

resonating in rhythm with the atmosphere!

I could have remained there

forever—as I did, a will.

And when I resumed my way,

my stay could no longer be

“ordinary”—

as they say,

as we say, in English.

For on the road of life,

in the code of life,

there’s much more to red than

“stop,”

there’s much more to green than

“go,”

and there’s much, much more to yellow than

“caution,”

for as the yellow

sun clearly enunciated to me this morning:

“Fusao. Inada.”

* * * * *

Lawson Fusao Inada is an emeritus professor of writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland and was the fifth poet laureate of the state of Oregon, serving from 2006-2010.

Inada's work has been recognized with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Book Award, the Oregon Book Award and the Pushcart Prize.

He is the author of three collections of poetry—Legends from Camp, Before the War and Drawing the Line, in which the above poem is included. He is also the coeditor of two ground-breaking anthologies of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature: The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature and Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience.

Ruth McLaughlin's memoir, 'Bound Like Grass'

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:29:00 +0000

Stories that unfurl in remote corners of eastern Montana tend to be heartbreaking, and Bound Like Grass, by Ruth McLaughlin, is no exception. But McLaughlin does not wallow. Rather, she explores the influences that made her family what it turned out to be and comes to conclusions that can illuminate the emotional landscape of any family.

Bound Like Grass is an engaging story that encompasses three generations: the idealistic homesteader grandparents, the hard-working parents, and the children who grew up, moved away and never returned. Mary Clearman Blew, author of Bone Deep in Landscape: Writing, Reading, and Place has this to say about McLaughlin's memoir:

"In this beautifully written but stark account of one ranching family's ties to the land, Ruth McLaughlin refutes the romantic myths that have distorted our view of the agrarian past. I wept as I read Bound Like Grass, out of sympathy but also in admiration of the strength and clarity of vision Ruth brings to these pages."

Tune in Thursday, April 21, for The Write Question, at 6:30 (Yellowstone Public Radio) or 7:30 (Montana Public Radio) to hear Ruth McLaughlin talk about her family and her book. She'll also read from one of the chapters.

Get more information about Ruth McLaughlin and listen online.

Germaine White talks about 'Bull Trout's Gift'

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:27:00 +0000

“We were wealthy from the water,” Mitch Smallsalmon says, and like all the tribal elders, he speaks to our understanding of the natural world and the consequences of change. In Bull Trout's Gift : A Salish Story About The Value of Reciprocity, the wisdom of the elders is passed on to the young as the story of the Jocko River, the home of the bull trout, unfolds for a group of schoolchildren on a field trip.

The Jocko River flows through the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. For thousands of years the Salish and Pend d’Oreille Indians lived along its banks, finding food and medicine in its plants and fish, and in the game hunted on its floodplain. Readers of this story will learn, along with the students of Ms. Howlett’s class, about the history and culture of the river and its meaning in Native life, tradition, and religion. They will also discover the scientific background and social importance behind the Tribes’ efforts to restore the bull trout to its home waters.

Beautifully illustrated and narrated in the tradition of the Salish and Kootenai Tribes, this account of conservation as the legacy of one generation to the next is about being good to the land that has been good to us. Bull Trout’s Gift is steeped in the culture, history, and science that our children must know if they hope to transform past wisdom into future good.

During this week's program, Germaine White will talk about Bull Trout's Gift, and the field journal, and the interactive DVD that make up the Bull Trout Education Project's set of materials designed for grade school students. White is the Information and Education Specialist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Natural Resources Department.

Hear the program at 6:30 p.m. (YPRadio.org) or 7:30 p.m. (MTPR.org). Or, click through to the Montana Public Radio Web site to listen online or sign up for The Write Question podcast.

Monday Poems: "Toward the Winter Solstice" -- by Timothy Steele

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:41:00 +0000

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

* * * * *

This poem appears in Timothy Steele’s most recent book of poems, Toward the Winter Solstice. His earlier poems are collected in Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986 and The Color Wheel. He has also published two volumes of literary criticism focusing on the lost arts of prosody and versification.

Much of Steele's poetry is written in traditional verse, using meter and rhyme, and so has been credited with contributing to the New Formalism movement in poetry.

Steele's work has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the Los Angeles PEN Center’s Literary Award for Poetry, among other awards. He lives in Los Angeles and is a professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles.

A Conversation about a few Good Books by Writers in the West

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:24:00 +0000

During this week's program, Chérie Newman, Barbara Theroux, and Zed talk about recently published books by writers from the West. Here's a list of the books they discuss during the progam, plus a few more:

FICTION for Young Readers:

Hangman's Gold, by Sneed B Collard

Wildwood: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book I, by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis

The Apothecary, by Maile Meloy

FICTION for Adults:

Lamb, by Bonnie Nadzam

Habibi, by Craig Thompson

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel, By Charles Yu

The Richest Hill on Earth, by Richard Wheeler

NONFICTION:

The Sourtoe Cocktail Club: The Yukon Odyssey of a Father and Son in Search of a Mummified Human Toe ... and Everything Else, by Ron Franscell

All Indians Do Not Live In Teepees (or Casinos), by Catherine C. Robbins

Hand Raised: Barns of Montana, by Christine Brown, Chere Jiusto, and Tom Ferris

Bull Trout's Gift: A Salish Story about the Value of Reciprocity, by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

Raptors of the West: Captured in Photographs, by Kate Davis, Rob Palmer, and Nick Dunlop

Time of our lives: A conversation about America; Who we are, where we've been, and where we need to go now, to recapture the ... , by Tom Brokaw

West of 98, edited by Russell Rowland and Lynn Stegner

POETRY

Rust Fish, a poetry collection by Maya Jewell Zeller

Our Blood Remembers: Poems, by Lois Red Elk

You'll find most of these books at Fact & Fiction in Missoula, or at your local independent bookseller.

Listen To The Program

Monday Poems: "Millennium Sutra" -- by Anne Waldman

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:24:00 +0000

what learned?
what trigger what reflection?

thus have I heard

This was something I dreamt waking
that the earth could
be scorched galactic cinder
frozen in orbit
about a gone sun

apocalyptic tongue'd preachers
line the mall
with glib glow & twitch
so that you sign on, sign on

give dollars,
& all around children begging
cranium resolve! cranium resolve!

& homeless in the streets
a bed for the night, will work, a bed...

vote apocalyptic
& you will get your war

thus have I heard

rain forests stripped & bare
no trove there
but all you could ever need—
a slump, a dress, a new life,
tales to be greedy by—
is accessed on a poison machine

what need we trees?
they grow in the brain

thus have I heard

* * * * *

Anne Waldman, along with Allen Ginsberg and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she serves as Distinguished Professor of Poetics and the Director of the famous Summer Writing Program.

Waldman is associated with the Beat poets and is an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist. She has published over 40 books of poetry, including: Manatee/Humanity (Penguin, 2009), Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble (2004), and Dark Arcana / Afterimage or Glow (2003), with photographs by Patti Smith. The above poem can be found in her collection In the Room of Never Grieve: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2003.

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:28:00 +0000

The following article, written by TWQ producer Chérie Newman, was originally published in the Billings Gazette.

Ed Kemmick showed up in Montana, in 1973, as a “citified teenager” who quickly developed a strong romantic desire: “I wanted not merely to live in Montana,” he writes in retrospect, “but to live out, in my own small way, the story of Montana as constructed by A.B. Guthrie.”

Emulating Boone Caudill — the central character in Guthrie’s famous novel, “The Big Sky” — turned out to be impractical. But Kemmick’s career in journalism has allowed him to experience another type of adventure. For 30 years he has written stories about Montana’s real-life characters. Now, some of those stories are available in a new book, “The Big Sky, By and By: True Tales, Real People and Strange Times in the Heart of Montana.”

Kemmick’s “real people” live in out-of-the-way places like Molt, Alzada, Fishtail, Culbertson and Fromberg. They also live in population centers like Billings, Livingston, Miles City and Butte. A few began life in Montana. Most did not. They range from the bizarre (a petrified man) to the saintly (a woman who makes the choice to care for her violent and cruel father during his old age). They are the flamboyant friends of Evel Knievel and a man from Fort Smith who has ridden motorcycles around the world — the long way — four times. They run the Dirty Shame Saloon, the Stoneville Saloon, a cowboy museum or a junks hop that has become a Chinese cultural museum. One woman “used to be the madam at the Wild Horse Pavilion and now she’s working as a greeter at the new Wal-Mart.” One man “used to eat a teaspoon full of arsenic every day to keep from dying.” They are black and brown and white and red. Musicians: Kostas, Dobro Dick, Roy Young, The Hogback Five.

At the end of each story, you will likely wonder what happened next. Did Jeff Hansen’s doctors find the right drugs to treat his inoperable brain tumor? Did the Bar Diamond Ranch sell? Was Johnnie Thomas able to finish writing the story of her husband’s life before she died?

Kemmick’s relationship with Montana began when he was an 18-year-old “intoxicated by the grandeur of Guthrie’s vision” of Big Sky Country in the mid-1800s. With this book, however, a mature, clear-eyed journalist claims a place on the list of writers who are replacing Montana’s worn-out romantic myths with the truth: Every sort of person lives in Montana.

Here’s hoping Ed Kemmick will write about many more of them.

Chérie Newman is a freelance writer from Missoula, where she produces a weekly literary program for public radio.

Copyright 2011 The Billings Gazette. All rights reserved.

Maile Meloy's new novel for middle readers, 'The Apothecary'

noreply@blogger.com (Cherie Newman for Montana Public Radio) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:52:00 +0000

Even if you are not attracted to the fantasy genre, you may be happily surprised by Maile Meloy's latest book. In a review of The Apothecary for the New York Times, (skeptic) Krystyna Poray Goddu wrote: "...the book, with its intricately constructed plot, well-paced suspense, credibly rendered fantastical elements, thoughtfully drawn characters and authentically detailed settings, satisfies on all levels. Even for a reader predisposed against the genre."

The story begins in Los Angeles, in 1952, when 14-year-old Janie Scott moves with her parents to London, England. There, she meets a mysterious apothecary and becomes fascinated by his son, Benjamin Burrows -- a 14-year-old boy who isn't afraid to stand up to authority and who dreams of becoming a spy.

Just before Benjamin's father is kidnapped, he gives Janie and Benjamin an ancient book, The Pharmacopoeia, insisting that they must keep it safe -- no matter what. It turns out that Russian spies want the book and will do anything to get it. Using the recipes for transformative elixirs they find in the book's pages, Janie and Benjamin stay one step ahead of the bad guys as they embark on a dangerous mission to save the apothecary and prevent impending nuclear disaster.

During this week's program, Maile Meloy will talk about where she got the idea for The Apothecary, her first novel for middle readers (she's the author of two adult novels and two story collections). She'll also read from the book and talk a little about her writing process.

You can hear the program on the radio or online:

Thursday, December 8 at 7:30 p.m. on Montana Public Radio
Thursday, December 8 at 6:30 p.m. on Yellowstone Public Radio
Online, anytime at MTPR.org
Via the MTPR podcast