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"A sad fact of our region's literary heritage is that too many poets receive
too little attention," writes Andrew Elkins. In Another Place Elkins sets
out to right that wrong.

   Many good poets live and have lived in the West, and the literary world
can benefit from extended discussions of writers whose lives and work
were formed west of the hundredth meridian. 

   A consistent theme in this poetry is that the West, as a land of imposing
geography, has a spirit of its own. Sensitive souls raised in or transplanted
to places like the New Mexico desert, the Alaskan wilderness, or the
Pacific shore absorb those spirits as part of their identities, and then the
place's essence—now integral to the poet's self—inevitably becomes part of
the work that flows from the poet's creativity. Alaskan poet John Haines
says, "I believe that there is a spirit of place, a presence asking to be
expressed; and sometimes when we are lucky as writers, and quiet in a
way few of us want to be anymore, a voice enters our own, becomes
mingled with it, and we speak with a force and clarity not otherwise
heard."

_________________________________________________________

ANDREW ELKINS is dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Peru
State University in Nebraska. He is the author of numerous essays on
Western poets and two books: The Poetry of James Wright (1991) and
The Great Poem of the Earth: A Study of the Poetry of Thomas Hornsby
Ferril (1997).



The Poets:

Peggy Pond Church

John Haines

Adrian Louis

Richard Hugo

Jane Hirshfield

and the cowboy poets