The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book won the Midwestern Studies Book Award, sponsored by the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML) and Ohio University Press.As the society’s representative, Edward Watts directed the review of my manuscript; David Sanders, director of the press, saw it through to publication. I extend to them my sincere gratitude and respect. I must recognize two fine scholars, now retired from Michigan State University,who favored me with their mentoring and friendship.David D. Anderson, the founder of SSML, offered essential advice and, as editor of society publications, an audience for my work in progress. James I. McClintock nurtured this project from its earliest origins. His marvelous book Nature’s Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder () offered a template for the kind of study I have here completed. He and Dr. Anderson have been, and remain, kindred as well as tutelary spirits. Important help was also provided by colleagues at several institutions, including Michigan State University, Grand Valley State University, Rutgers University, and the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, and by independent readers. I especially wish to thank Thomas Bailey, Terrell Beck, Roger Bresnahan, Joseph Burroughs, Leslie Fishbein, Milton Ford, Angus Gillespie, Sharon Jessee, Katherine Joslin,Ted Kooser, Stephen Lee, Deborah Popper, Frank Popper, Michael Rockland, and Robert Treu. My thanks also go to Jim Harrison for many kindnesses, including the moving tribute to my late sister,Teresa, in his essay “Eating Close to the Ground.” Et in Arcadia ego. Artist Dan Beresford provided the illustration for the dust jacket and the frontispiece. Having spent his early years in Wisconsin and Michigan , Beresford has an eye for midwestern scenes, though he makes his home in Livingston, Montana. xvii You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. My mother, Caroline, and my late father, Guillermo, encouraged me all along, and my beautiful wife, María, inspired me to complete the manuscript.This book is dedicated to her. Versions of several passages appeared in Midamerica and Midwestern Miscellany, published by SSML.A version of chapter  appeared as “Aldo Leopold and Midwestern Pastoralism” in American Studies , no.  (Fall ): –, ©  by the Mid-America American Studies Association and reprinted by permission. Quotation of Jim Harrison’s poem “Northern Michigan,” from The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems, ©  by Jim Harrison, is by permission of the author and Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box , PortTownsend,WA –.Three short poems from Braided Creek:A Conversation in Poetry, ©  by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser, are reprinted by permission of Harrison, Kooser, and Copper Canyon Press. The poem “Milkweed” by James Wright, quoted from Above the River:The Complete Poems of James Wright, is from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, ), ©  by JamesWright and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. xviii Acknowledgments You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. The Midwestern Pastoral You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Since to settle somewhere, to inhabit a space, is equivalent to repeating the cosmogony and hence to imitating the work of the gods, it follows that, for religious man, every existential decision to situate himself in space in fact constitutes a religious decision. —Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane Conceive if you will the mightiness of that dream, that these fields and places, out here west of Pittsburgh, may become sacred places, that because of this terrible thing, of which we may now become a part, there is hope of hardness and leanness—that we may get to lives of which we may be unashamed. —Sherwood Anderson, Mid-American Chants You are reading...