Dakota: A Spiritual Geography - Hardcover

Norris, Kathleen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395633206 ISBN 13: 9780395633205

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade), 1993

Synopsis

Norris, Kathleen. Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Uncorrected Proof. New York, Ticknor & Fields / Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993. 13.5 x 21cm. (8), 225 pages. Original softcover. Excellent condition. Nearly 20 years ago, poet Kathleen Norris and her husband moved from New York to the isolated town of Lemmon in northwestern South Dakota, home of her grandparents. Living there radically changed her sense of time and place, forcing her to come to terms with her heritage, her religious beliefs and the land. Norris learned to value the prairie landscape and to cope with the harsh climate. She found small-town life a mass of contradictions: generous hospitality mixed with suspicion of strangers, inertia and a sense of inferiority. One boon to her new life was a community of Benedictine monks; with them she recaptured her (Protestant) Christian faith and discovered inner peace. This is a fine portrait of the High Plains and its people as well as a very personal memoir of a spiritual awakening. [From Publishers Weekly]

About this title

Product Description

A celebrated poet transports readers to the heart of the Great Plains, examining her heritage, religion, language, and the land itself, revealing the contradictions of small-town life on the Great Plains. 10,000 first printing.

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 polarising 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 (such as her discussion on the foreign concept of tofu) tribute to Dakota, including its Native Americans, Benedictine monks, ministers and church-goers, wind-weathered farmers, and all its plain folks who live such complicated and simple lives. --Gail Hudson

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0395633206
• ISBN 13: 9780395633205
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224