Breathing the West: Great Basin Poems (Working Lives)

In a passage from his 1939 journal, Liane Ellison Norman�s father might be writing presciently about her own poetic intentions. "My purpose, I think, is social: to lead people toward sanity & wisdom by recovering the primitive environment." The environment Norman brings us in Breathing the West is a rich terrain of family, memory, passionate social commitments, and sharply-observed detail. As you journey with her through these poems, you�ll be glad you met her people, shared her experiences, and travelled her personal landscape. You�ll find she�s moved you toward sanity and wisdom, too. �Richard St. John, author of The Pure Inconstancy of Grace: PoemsBreathing the West is an historical and natural history in poetry of the Great Basin and the Wasatch mountains of Utah where the poet Liane Norman grew up and where "the back slopes...taught (her) how to breathe." There�s a lot of room to breathe in the West and, using family stories, her naturalist father�s journals, and her own clear-eyed memories, Norman evokes its vastness with stunning imagery and sonorous lines. I am both delighted and taught by these wild and welcome poems. -Maggie Anderson, author of Windfall: New and Selected Poems