Beowulf to Beatles and Beyond: The Varieties of Poetry

Literature & Fiction

Pichaske, David R.

Poetry

Macmillan Pub. Co.

The musical magic of the 1960s is recreated with photographs, song lyrics, and commentary, capturing the idealism and pioneer spirit of a theatrical decade

A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties

Arts & Photography

Music

Schirmer Books

The musical magic of the 1960s is recreated with photographs, song lyrics, and commentary, capturing the idealism and pioneer spirit of a theatrical decade

A generation in motion: Popular music and culture in the sixties

David Pichaske has been writing and teaching about midwestern literature for three decades. In Rooted, by paying close attention to text, landscape, and biography, he examines the relationship between place and art. His focus is on seven midwestern authors who came of age toward the close of the twentieth century, their lives and their work grounded in distinct places: Dave Etter in small-town upstate Illinois; Norbert Blei in Door County, Wisconsin; William Kloefkorn in southern Kansas and Nebraska; Bill Holm in Minneota, Minnesota; Linda Hasselstrom in Hermosa, South Dakota; Jim Heynen in Sioux County, Iowa; and Jim Harrison in upper Michigan. The writers' intimate knowledge of place is reflected in their use of details of geography, language, environment, and behavior. Yet each writer reaches toward other geographies and into other dimensions of art or thought: jazz music and formalism in the case of Etter; gender issues in the case of Hasselstrom; time past and present in the case of Kloefkorn; ethnicity and the role of the artist in the case of Blei; magical realism in the case of Heynen; the landscape of literature in the case of Holm; and the curious worlds of academia, best-selling novels, and Hollywood films in the case of Harrison. The result, Pichaske notes, is the growing away from roots, the explorations and alter egos of these writers of place, and the tension between the “here” and “there” that gives each writer's art the complexity it needs to transcend provincial boundaries. Quoting generously from the writers, Pichaske employs a practical, jargon-free literary analysis fixed in the text, making Rooted interesting, readable, and especially useful in treating the literary categories of memoir and literary essay that have become important in recent decades.

Rooted: Seven Midwest Writers of Place (American Land & Life)

History & Criticism

University Of Iowa Press

David Pichaske has been writing and teaching about midwestern literature for three decades. In Rooted, by paying close attention to text, landscape, and biography, he examines the relationship between place and art. His focus is on seven midwestern authors who came of age toward the close of the twentieth century, their lives and their work grounded in distinct places: Dave Etter in small-town upstate Illinois; Norbert Blei in Door County, Wisconsin; William Kloefkorn in southern Kansas and Nebraska; Bill Holm in Minneota, Minnesota; Linda Hasselstrom in Hermosa, South Dakota; Jim Heynen in Sioux County, Iowa; and Jim Harrison in upper Michigan. The writers' intimate knowledge of place is reflected in their use of details of geography, language, environment, and behavior. Yet each writer reaches toward other geographies and into other dimensions of art or thought: jazz music and formalism in the case of Etter; gender issues in the case of Hasselstrom; time past and present in the case of Kloefkorn; ethnicity and the role of the artist in the case of Blei; magical realism in the case of Heynen; the landscape of literature in the case of Holm; and the curious worlds of academia, best-selling novels, and Hollywood films in the case of Harrison. The result, Pichaske notes, is the growing away from roots, the explorations and alter egos of these writers of place, and the tension between the ?here” and ?there” that gives each writer's art the complexity it needs to transcend provincial boundaries. Quoting generously from the writers, Pichaske employs a practical, jargon-free literary analysis fixed in the text, making Rooted interesting, readable, and especially useful in treating the categories of memoir and literary essay that have become important in recent decades.

Ellis Pr

A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Cultures in the Sixties

UB03 paints realistic portrait in words and photographs of Ulaanbaatar and rural Mongolia (including the Gobi) during the author's Fulbright year of 2003. Pichaske meditates on trash and the Black Market, on opera singers and morin khuur concerts, on dogs and fences and slum districts and nomadic life in one of the harshest landscapes on the planet. His photos are rarely picturesque or touristy: he gives us instead stairs leading to nowhere, bags of groceries hanging outside of dormitory windows, dogs snoozing in the sun, MonRonald's Restaurant and Life Kife Bar &amp; Pub, a section of paving stones mosaiced around the root of a tree, a herder on horseback pointing directions in the vast Gobi emptiness.

UB03: A Season in Outer Mongolia

Ellis Press

Late Harvest: Rural American Writing

The contributions of thirty-five important contemporary authors--including Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Garrison Keillor--highlight a superlative anthology that documents America's firm ties to its rural roots.

Paragon_House

Pichaske’s stories take us from the halls of academe to small-town Minnesota to a little village on the edge of the Bavarian National Forest. Speaking in voices of a farmer right out of Deliverance, a disgruntled Professor of English, and his dog Harley, Pichaske says what many people think, but few have the courage to say. While he is especially strong on details of history, place, and language, the hard-nosed wisdom his narrators offer transcends place and even time. From "Daisy": Look—there are always dreams. And in dreams the ultimate purity: by now she may be fat and forty, stretch marks, grey hair, three kids. The ravages of time, you know? Look at you and me: not exactly the bright and rising stars we were twenty years ago, eh? But in dreams, the years are invisible. People never age in dreams.

The Pigeons of Buchenau and Other Stories

Humor & Satire

Texas Review Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pichaske, David R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pichaske, David R.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pichaske, David R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Beowulf to Beatles and Beyond: The Varieties of Poetry

A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties

A generation in motion: Popular music and culture in the sixties

Rooted: Seven Midwest Writers of Place (American Land & Life)

Rooted: Seven Midwest Writers of Place (American Land & Life)

A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties

A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Cultures in the Sixties

UB03: A Season in Outer Mongolia

Late Harvest: Rural American Writing

The Pigeons of Buchenau and Other Stories