Dakota: A Spiritual Geography - Softcover

Norris, Kathleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039571091X ISBN 13: 9780395710913

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1993

Synopsis

Norris provides an evocative tribute to the Great Plains and their power to transform the spirits of farmers, townsfolk, Native Americans, and others. "Deeply moving."--New York Times Book Review.

About this title

Review:

After 20 years of living in the "Great American Outback," as Newsweek magazine once designated the Dakotas, poet Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) came to understand the fascinating ways that people become metaphors for the land they inhabit. When trying to understand the polarizing contradictions that exist in the Dakotas between "hospitality and insularity, change and inertia, stability and instability.... between hope and despair, between open hearts and closed minds," Norris draws a map. "We are at the point of transition between east and west in the United States," she explains, "geographically and psychically isolated from either coast, and unlike either the Midwest or the desert west."

Like Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge), Norris understands how the boundary between inner and outer scenery begins to blur when one is fully present in the landscape of their lives. As a result, she offers the geography lesson we all longed for in school. This is a poetic, noble, and often funny (see her discussion on the foreign concept of tofu) tribute to Dakota, including its Native Americans, Benedictine monks, ministers and churchgoers, wind-weathered farmers, and all its plain folks who live such complicated and simple lives. --Gail Hudson

About the Author:

Kathleen Norris is the author of two books of poetry, Falling Off (1971) and The Middle of the World (1981) and has received awards from the Guggenheim and Bush foundations. She lives in Lemmon, South Dakota, with her husband.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 039571091X
• ISBN 13: 9780395710913
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224