University of Nebraska Press

New Years Resolution #3 or Yes Virginia, there are living poets!

Read More Contemporary Poetry

Yeah, Milton is great, but what do you think about Josh Bell?  What about Ted Kooser?  Any women poets like Kathleen Flenniken or Cortney Davis?

The Blizzard Voices
By Ted Kooser
With a new introduction by the author

Famous
By Kathleen Flenniken
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry

Adonis Garage
By Rynn Williams

No Planets Strike
By Josh Bell

Leopold's Maneuvers
By Cortney Davis
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry

Thirty Years War: Love Poems
By Patricia Ferrell
Introduction by Richard Howard
2003 Winner of the Paris Review Prize in Poetry

Techne's Clearinghouse
By John Foy

Mother Quiet
By Martha Rhodes

New Years Resolution #2

Eat Better, or Culturally, or Learn a New Recipe, or Just Think about Food Differently

Eat Culturally:
The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe
By Lesley Chamberlain
With a new introduction by the author

Learning a little about the food while learning recipes

Masters of American Cookery: M. F. K. Fisher, James Beard, Craig Claiborne, Julia Child
By Betty Fussell
With a preface by the author

Learn a New Recipe:

Good Things
By Jane Grigson
From the At Table series
A celebration of fresh daily fare lovingly prepared

Think Differently and Literary about food while learning new French recipes:

Dining with Marcel Proust: A Practical Guide to French Cuisine of the Belle Epoque
By Shirley King
Foreword by James Beard

Like an edible À la recherche du temps perdu.

Eat Culturally

Pampille's Table: Recipes and Writings from the French Countryside from Marthe Daudet's Les Bons Plats de France
Translated and adapted by Shirley King

More literary French eating!

Think differently about food:

Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias
Edited by Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch
From the At Table series

Eat Better and culturally:

A Taste of Heritage: Crow Indian Recipes and Herbal Medicines
By Alma Hogan Snell
From the At Table series

Read an excerpt and get some neat recipes for buffaloberry!

New Years Resolution #1

Appreciate More Music

True to the Roots: Americana Music Revealed
By Monte Dutton

Interviews and portraits of the folks who make Our Kind of Music (OKOM), or Alternative Country, including artists such as Jack Ingram, Brad Paisley, or bands such as Reckless Kelly.

When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representations
By Robin Ridington and Jillian Ridington

Essays about stories.  Essays about hearing these stories.  Robing Ridington and Jillian Ridington share their experiences with the Athapaskan-speaking Dane-zaa people, who live in Canada's Peace River area.  Check out the audio page for When You Sing it Now, Just Like New.

XX: Lyrics and Photographs of the Cowboy Junkies, with watercolors by Enrique Martínez Celaya
Lyrics and photographs of the Coywboy Junkies
Watercolors by Enrique Martínez Celaya

A celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Cowboy Junkies with lyrics, photographs, and Enrique Martínez Celaya's work.

Bodily Charm: Living Opera
By Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon

Opera is alive in the performers and in itself.  Works such as Richard Strauss'  Salome are used for an interdisciplinary  exploration of the operatic body -- physical and represented.

The Musical Worlds of Lerner and Loewe
By Gene Lees

Because of Lerner, Eliza Doolittle was able to say, "I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night/ And still have begged for more."  Frederick Loewe wrote the music to "Thank Heaven For Little Girls."

You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat
By Gene Lees
Foreword by Nat Hentoff

Journalist and music critic Gene Lees offers minibiographies of jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton and Nat King Cole and the impact of racism on jazz during the bebop and cool jazz eras.

If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition
By Bernice Johnson Reagon

Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, centers four essays on spiritual music with the theme of African American migration.

Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere
By Erik Ryding and Rebecca Pechefsky
With a new introduction by the authors

A biography of conductor Bruno Walter, following his career in Germany and the United States, his friendships with people such as Gustav Mahler, and his essential recordings with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

Happy Chanukah

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

onsider the orchids of the fields. They neither weave nor sew. Nor do I suspect they sit in the field wondering if the next flower over is prettier. But humans do.

Yes, I know in the Bible it is lilies, but in Scott Westerfeld’s book, Uglies, it is orchids, beautiful and once rare, white orchids that have been genetically modified to become hardy that take over and crowd out other plants, leaching the soil and finally leaving the earth barren. This is just a symbol, but it is a powerful one.

Exploring Ambiguity in Elsie's Business

by Joshua Beran

onsidering all that happens to the lead character, there is very little "action" in Elsie's Business.

In place of action, Washburn gives us relationships, internal dialogue, and
atmosphere.  Though the book streches over several years, most of it is set in
the ruthless South Dakota winter.  Prairie winters are deadly, unchanging, and
unwelcoming.  Long winters can close minds, leaving those that live through them locked up with the same people they have always known.  There is stasis; nothing moves, nobody moves.  Even the dead stay above ground, waiting for the land to thaw. 

The book can also be seen as a parable.  We see the helplessness of Elsie, a
traumatized young native woman.  We also see the struggles of other natives and the white outcasts of her community.  We also see how powerful people --  sheriff's, religious leaders, and land barons -- are also rendered helpless by circumstance, social custom, their politically loaded interactions with each other, and the all-consuming winter. Elsie's Business shows us the futility of forming social pyramids, especially in a land that has so little to give to begin with.

_________________

I'm a 25 year-old senior English major at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  I'm originally from North Platte, NE, and I've always been fascinated by the unspoken in rural Great Plains culture.

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House on Haunted Hill

fter a rant on reading books, I’m now going to discuss a movie. Oh well. I’ll get to more books next week because I recently got my hands on the old Vincent Price classic The House on Haunted Hill. When something is considered a classic it is usually for one of a couple of reasons. It did it first. Pamela may not be the best novel out there, but where it stands in history looms so large, it is worth the read. It did it, not only first, but best. Frankenstein. No one ever did that as well as she did. Or it took the ideas others had and did it best. This is where The House on Haunted Hill stands.

It is not the first story or movie about a bunch of people trapped in a supposedly haunted mansion with someone who may be psycho. But it is one of the best.

General Custer's Birthday

George Armstrong Custer, American Civil War general and of Little Bighorn fame, was born on this date in 1839.

Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer
By Louise Barnett
With a new preface by the author

“There is much unusual and useful information about life on the plains, Indian warfare, the danger and fear of captivity by Indians, and especially, the relationship between Custer and his wife.”—New York Times Book Review

Feathering Custer
By W. S. Penn
2002 Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Writer of the Year

“Feathering Custer points to the need for critical understanding of the literatures of Native America. Penn's volume offers a challenge to all those interested in meaningful insights into these literary works to search the indigenous storytelling traditions, lives, and literatures of Native Americans.”—World Literature Today.

Showdown at Little Big Horn
By Dee Brown

"A very powerful story that draws one in much the same way as a good novel: by evoking the sights, the smells, the noise, and the desperation of the battle. This is essential history for the Custer buff, or anyone interested in the Indian Wars on the Plains."—Roundup Magazine

For more Custer titles, check our Custer book page.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

n the world of literature, fantasy, science fiction, and horror do not rate. Those of us in sf tend to bemoan this fact. Why are we not taken seriously? Why does the establishment not give us our due? Here's a strange thought. Maybe, in a lot of cases, we deserve it.

Of the three speculative fiction types, science fiction certainly has the most possibility for respect. Soft sociological sf is generally seen as "serious". Fantasy and horror are more difficult, though not impossible. There is the increasingly "serious" magical realism group. And Joyce Carol Oates seems to enjoy her associations with horror, providing an introduction to an H.P. Lovecraft anthology and certainly never seeming to mind being included in the horror category sometimes, as Margaret Atwood does so idiotically with sf. So it is possible to be taken seriously, however, on the whole, if you mention any of the speculative genres to the average person (not the 5% of us who are regular readers) they will assume it is not art. Not Literature. Not worthy. Because in a lot of cases they are right.