Troubled Intimacies: A Life in the Interior West
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By
David Axelrod
2004. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches, 192 pages.
ISBN 0-87071-038-9. Paperback, $18.95.
Table of Contents
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Having grown up amid the ravaged coalfields of Ohio, David Axelrod felt oddly at home when, twenty years ago, he moved west and saw his first clear-cut forest. In
Troubled Intimacies, Axelrod explores his life in the rural interior West and the way in which surroundings, visible and invisible, shape our emotional and intellectual lives.
In describing his life and the lives of his neighbors in eastern Oregon's Grande Ronde Valley, Axelrod raises hard questions about the relationship between humans and the western landscape-a relationship too often predicated on disastrous violence. Axelrod reveals the dissonance that exists between the mythical American West and the far more complex, troubled relations we actually experience as individuals and communities in the western U.S. In these powerful and provocative essays, he shows the challenges and rewards of piecing together a meaningful life in the rural West.
"This collection of wonderfully crafted essays demonstrates David Axelrod's remarkable talent for writing as well as his keen observations of both nature and humanity. Here we discover the intricacies of birds' nests and poetry, the excitement of beekeeping and stargazing, along with the hardscrabble of rural poverty, the challenges of being Jewish in the remote West. By turns humorous, wise, and poignant, Axelrod's prose is always graceful. Troubled Intimacies is a generous gift to the reader." --Craig Lesley
About the Author
David Axelrod is professor of English at Eastern Oregon University. His essays and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including
Kenyon Review, Cimmaron Review, Boulevard, and
From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry, and he is the author of several poetry collections, most recently
From the Chronicles of the Withering State.
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