Coop: a Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting

by Michael Perry (2009)

Michael meanders all over and often uses words that are beyond my vocabulary and yet he always manages to keep my attention. He has such respect for his parents and the rural life he grew up with and he struggles (as I and many others do) to retain their values and choices. His biggest struggle though out the book is that he is trying to do too much. He is always behind on his writing and often has others do the building or butchering that he imagined he would be doing. When he brings up the idea of getting sheep, his wife replies,"I have this vision of you in Des Moines, talking about writing and raising sheep--meanwhile, I'm running through the brush with a howling six-month-old under one arm and dragging a bawling seven-year-old behind me with the other arm while we try to get the sheep back inside a hole in the cobbled-up fence" (214). Reading about Michael Perry being stretched too thin was timely for me. I had been feeling the same and in the course of time it took me to finish this book, I made a decision to cut back on some of my obligations in order to spend more time writing and more time on the farm. I am also reminded how fortunate I am that my farming can be a source of income for me versus a distraction from money-making commitments as it is for Perry.

And my favorite quote, as he watches old farmers give their condolences to his brother at his nephew's funeral: "it strikes me again how much we miss if we rely wholly on poets to parse the tender center of the human heart" (273).

Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

by Kent Nerburn

This book arrived in the mail a month ago just as I had reached a break point in my writing and was looking to be consumed by a good read. Cory had received it as a gift and was almost finished reading it when she went online and bought me a copy as well. So many of my favorite books have come to me as recommendations from my friends and this book is another. The book starts with a request, from Dan, a 78 year old Lakota man to Kent, a 40 year old white writer: "I want you to help me write a book. I want to get this all down... What I have in my mind." As the book evolves, we do hear Dan's poignant philosophies on Indian history and relations between Indian and white people, but these philosophies are framed by another story, the present-tense story of the relationship between Dan and Kent and the story of how this book comes to be. The best advice to Kent comes early on in the book when Dan's friend Grover tells Kent to "write it all" not just the speeches and ultimately the book feels balanced and real and honest because he shows Dan as a complicated character and himself as a complicated character. It may be easier to leave the complexities out, but it is the complexities that drew me into the story and kept it real.