The Mountains I Raise: A Garnering in Prose and Verse - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0963860313 ISBN 13: 9780963860316

Publisher: Ravenscroft Pr, 1997

Synopsis

In the poem that gives this book its name, Robert Frost muses on the difficulty of gathering together a yard full of leaves. Like the gathering up of a lifetime of experiences, he finds it no small task.

"Next to nothing for use, And since they grow duller from contact with earth, Next to nothing for color " he says of them; and many of the 11 contributors to this book began by thinking their own experiences "next to nothing" in terms of significance - until slowly, over time, their willingness to tell their stories and bar the door on Reticence made them know otherwise.

About this title

About the Author:

For more than two decades, Terry Marotta has been writing a weekly column that now appears in papers all over the country. Born in Boston, raised in Lowell 20 miles to the north, she graduated from Smith College, then taught high school in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, where she says she was permanently changed by contact with the frank and intelligent questions of the adolescents she met there.

After having some babies and putting in thousands of hours laundering and folding teensy jumpsuits, it came to her that what she'd REALLY always wanted to do was write a newspaper column. This idea came to her when the babies were napping, as she leafed through her high school yearbook and saw what her sweet, brooch-wearing English teacher had once penned there. "I hope you do write that column," the lady had said; so Terry sat down and wrote one then and there and has been doing the same thing every week ever since, come fire or funeral or the onset of labor. Back in NASA's glory days, she got clear to the finals in the competition designed to send a journalist up in the Shuttle, and though that initiative sleeps yet in bureaucratic mothballs, she still considers herself to be in training for the job.

Besides producing the column and writing books, Marotta has also done pieces for Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul, Woman's Day, and Parents. She also does commentaries for Public Radio and today lives just eight miles north of Boston with her family in a house that looks like a big old ship run aground that is slowly, peacefully covering itself over in a Sleeping-Beauty's-castle tangle of ivy.

Review:

"I loved this book. Re-reading just about every article has prolonged the experience - joyously...." -- A reader from Connecticut

"I was deeply moved by Terry's work, drawing forth so much that is tangible and good from these people." -- A reader from Florida

"My eyes started misting during the introduction and didn't stop until I reached the end!" -- A reader from Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Ravenscroft Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0963860313
• ISBN 13: 9780963860316
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 124
• Editor: Marotta Terry