Poetry
Dacotah Territory: A 10 Year Anthology
A collection of poems originally published in Dacotah Territory Magazine
Edited by Mark Vinz and Grayce Ray
Only a few copies remain of this celebration of 1970s literary culture on the northern plains. The book begins with essays by Mark Vinz, Joseph Richardson, Robert Schuler, and Grayce Ray--the movers and shakers whose passion pushed them to edit, publish, and distribute poetry and prose. Illustrations and photographs by Bernel Bayliss, Leo Kim, James Ver Doorn, Carol Smith, Linda Hanson, and more--first seen in issues of Dacotah Territory--are interspersed throughout the collection. All of the poems in this collection are extracted from previous issues of Dacotah Territory Magazine. The poems are presented alphabetically by author, and the appendix lists the poems in the order they originally appeared, by issue. Poets include Robert Bly, Alvin Greenberg, Patricia Hampl, Joy Harjo, Margaret Hasse, Dale Jacobson, Deborah Keenan, Ted Kooser, Richard Lyons, Thomas McGrath, and many more.
Destiny Manifested
"Expansive, full of grace and wit, meditation and mourning, Staiger's poetry accomplishes the difficult task of rendering a true portrait of her home, leaving in the grit alongside the sunflowers, the grime beside the larkspurs."--Amie Whittenmore, Glass Harvest
"A sense of place defines this book. Staiger reminds us that history is the lived experience of people in a distinct place...where weather matters and...the cycle of seasons mirrors the cycles of life."--Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
Bonnie Larson Staiger is the first recipient of our Voices of the Plains and Prairies Poetry Award.
Devotions
Timothy Murphy's poetry explores themes of faith, family, spirituality, death, friendship, and love, all rooted in place—the Red and Sheyenne River watersheds, North Dakota, and the Great Plains. Devotions, his newest collection, revives a major but neglected poetic genre with variety and amplitude. In 200+ short poems, he explores the vicissitudes of modern spiritual life, including his passions for hunting, Scouting, and people.
Seasoned
It seems that everyday life is dotted with moments that one wants to remember and share. When the circumstances and situations of my life provide me such moments, I try to make notes or a rough draft of a poem as soon as possible. Such events might be coffee with a friend, a walk around a park, a weekend camping trip, cleaning the house, a family celebration, or vacation travel. Sometimes I read, hear, overhear, or glimpse similar events of other people. In those cases, I imagine the cause or result of a situation of which I don’t have actual knowledge. After a period of informal meditation (usually days or weeks, but sometimes years) I revise the draft into a poem to share my experience, insight, discovery, or surprise. My lifelong goal as a writer is to have my readers, at least for a moment, perceive something as closely as possible to the way I perceived it. This collection of my recent work features the perceptions of a post-retirement guy paying attention to the current events of his life and times, and often commenting on his discoveries of how he and the world have changed through the seasons of the seventy-some years of his existence.
Available early December 2023
David R. Solheim, the North Dakota Statehood Centennial Poet, has published writing in more than two dozen periodicals and had work in several anthologies. He wrote two poetry chapbooks published by Dacotah Territory. His four previous books of poetry and a literary travelog related to Thoreau’s 1861 visit to Minnesota are available via buffalocommonspress.com. Solheim is an English Professor Emeritus of Dickinson State University, where he taught for almost 30 years, and, thanks to the late Larry Woiwode, an Emeritus Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota. He holds degrees in English and creative writing from Gustavus Adolphus College, Stanford University, and the University of Denver. Early in his career, he was a temporary faculty member at NDSU and conducted numerous programs for the North Dakota Humanities Council (now Humanities North Dakota) and the ND Council on the Arts. After residing in Minnesota for the last 10 years, he and his wife, Dr. Barbara Laman, also an Emeritus English Professor of DSU, have resettled near family members in the Portland, Oregon, area. Between them, Dave and Barbara have five adult children and seven grandchildren.
ISBN: 978-1-946163-52-3
Page Count: 78
Paperback
Publication Year: 2023
Fargo, 1957: An Elegy
Poetry by Jamie Parsley with 60+ black & white photos. Paperback. 172pp In the early evening of Thursday, June 20, 1957, a tornado struck the city of Fargo, North Dakota. When it was done, ten people lay dead (three more would later die from their injuries), a city was devastated and countless lives would never be the same again. Among the dead were two relatives of Jamie Parsley, a poet and an Episcopal priest, who was born almost thirteen years after the storm. In this evocative and moving elegy of the storm and its victims, Parsley, an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota, weaves a heartbreaking story of loss, poetry, pain, faith and, ultimately, renewal, and gives voice to those victims who, before now, were unable to speak for themselves. Fargo, 1957 is the story of the resilience and fortitude of the people who survived the storm, and those who did not.
Field Notes
In April 1909, twenty-two-year-old Robert Silliman Judd, born and raised in Bethel, Connecticut, climbed aboard a train bound for the northern plains where his uncle Elmer farmed in Cando, North Dakota. Robert roamed the prairie with Elmer for six months, observing and collecting birds during the great spring migration.
Decades later, Robert’s granddaughter Margaret Rogal discovered his notebooks filled with detailed records of birds, nests, and eggs, along with his letters and summaries portraying his love for North Dakota and the thousands of migrating birds, alighting, it seemed, at his very feet.
Margaret responded to the trove of documents with poetry; each sample herein is an exploration of Robert’s experience.
A Little Book about North Dakota, Volume 1
6"x 6", paperback, 120 pages, color illustrations throughout