Research Catalog

Title

West of the American dream : an encounter with Texas / Paul Christensen.

Author

Christensen, Paul, 1943-

Publication

College Station : Texas A & M University Press, ©2001.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xv, 340 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

• "Like many a pioneer exiting the eastern forests, Paul Christensen felt the strangeness of an alien landscape when he first arrived in Texas in 1974. Schooled in the cool colors of life and poetry in the urban East, he approached his new career in the Southwest with missionary zeal and purpose: to discover the land and the kind of people and poetry it produced."
• "West of the American Dream is a multifaceted account of the search. Christensen shares his feelings of culture shock in east-central Texas as he meets the cowboy version of the blue-collar Texan and his Mexican American neighbours. He introduces readers to the convoluted history of poetry in Texas, a tradition, started by women, that shifted from a focus on the land to the quotidian habits of urban living. Using a unique dissection of the public ritual of a poetry reading, Christensen assesses the origins of modern poetry, the value of imagination in modernist and postmodernist verse, and what Texas poets achieved and how their work evolved after World War II."--Jacket.

Series Statement

Tarleton State University southwestern studies in the humanities ; no. 14

Uniform Title

Tarleton State University southwestern studies in the humanities ; no. 14.

Subject

• Christensen, Paul, 1943- > Homes and haunts > Texas
• Sánchez, Ricardo, 1941-1995
• Gordone, Charles
• Miller, Vassar
• Christensen, Paul, 1943-
• Gordone, Charles
• Miller, Vassar
• Sánchez, Ricardo, 1941-1995
• 1900-1999
• American poetry > Texas > History and criticism
• American poetry > 20th century > History and criticism
• Poets, American > 20th century > Biography
• English teachers > Texas > Biography
• American poetry
• English teachers
• Homes
• Intellectual life
• Literature
• Poets, American
• Texas > Intellectual life
• Texas > In literature
• Texas

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-325) and index.

Contents

First things -- Of underworlds -- Poetry readings -- I and thou -- "Good-by, you big lummax, I'm glad you backed out" -- A photo album -- The imagination -- How to read a poem -- Democratic vistas -- A portrait of Vassar Miller -- A portrait of Charles Gordone -- A portrait of Ricardo Sánchez -- "The simple bitter sap."

ISBN

• 0890967539
• 9780890967539

LCCN

2001000225

OCLC

• ocm45750229
• 45750229
• SCSB-1232465

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library