Thinking Continental

Tom Lynch is a coeditor, with Susan Maher, of Artifacts and Illuminations: Critical Essays on Loren Eiseley (Nebraska, 2012). Susan Naramore Maher is the author of Deep Map Country: Literary Cartography of the Great Plains (Nebraska, 2014). Drucilla Wall is the author of two poetry collections, including The Geese at the Gates. O. Alan Weltzien is the author of Exceptional Mountains: A Cultural History of the Pacific Northwest Volcanoes (Nebraska, 2016).

“This is exactly the kind of book that helps us to understand where and who we are, what it means to be ‘emplaced’ on this planet.”-Scott Slovic, coeditor of Ecocritical Aesthetics: Language, Beauty, and the Environment  “With the help of literature, these essays and poems lead us from personal particulars to our shared planet, and in so doing, they nourish our filamentary imaginations.”-SueEllen Campbell, author of The Face of the Earth: Natural Landscapes, Science, and Culture  “Time and again I found articles, essays, and poems working together like facets of a prism, a succeeding work illuminating the one before it and setting up resonances with the one to follow.”-Robert Root, author of Postscripts: Retrospections on Time and Place

• Introduction: An Alignment of Stones    Part 1. Ground TruthsA World of Islands    Elizabeth DoddThree Stations along the Ring of Fire    O. Alan WeltzienThe Deepest Layer    Harmon MaherDeep Mapping Communities in the West of Ireland    Nessa CroninWhere Narratives Met: Microplace and Macrospace in Early Fascist Primary School Textbooks and the Case of Eugenio Cirese’s Gente buona (1925)    Fabiana DimpflmeierImagining the Memory of the Earth: Geo-Site and the Aesthetic of the Anthropocene    Andrea BenassiCacophonous Silence (The Sound of Falling Wildly): A Transnational Experiment in Ecological Performance Poiesis    Jess Allen and Bronwyn PreecePoetry 1: Ground TruthsMeadows and Fireflies    Aliki BarnstoneSonora Desert: Winter Afternoon Singing Itself    Alberto RÍosToo Easy    Greg DelantyCommunion    Twyla HansenStrata Songs: Galway and Arizona    Susan Millar DuMarsSutra, in Umber    Kimberly BlaeserAfter Taiwan    Kimberly BlaeserBirth of a Nation    Colm TÓibÍnEncounter    Tess GallagherMatters of Geneva    Dawn DuplerThe Course of the Peculiar    Michael HeffernanTsÉ Bit’a’Í    Christine CassonKonza Prairie    O. Alan WeltzienGlaciers, Mountains, Falls    David BrannanPart 2. Watershed WaysBraided Channels of Watershed Consciousness: Loren Eiseley’s “The Flow of the River” and the Platte Basin Timelapse Project    Tom LynchPlovers, Great Blues, Horned Owl: A Poet’s Ecotone    Brendan GalvinSuperior: Reimagining the Interior of a Continent    Susan Naramore MaherPathways of the Yellowstone    Bernard QuetchenbachThe Proximity of Far Away: Climate Change Comes to the Alligator    Rick Van NoyWhat You Take from the Sea    Mary SwanderRecontinentalizing Europe: Terrestrial Conversion and Symbolic Exchanges at Europe’s Mediterranean Frontier    Emilio CoccoPoetry 2: Watershed WaysWith a Hurricane, She Climbs Mountains while She Dreams    Pam UschukThe Mighty Mississippi    Twyla HansenMississippi Delta Lay Down    Ann Fisher-WirthLinks        Brendan GalvinBy the Sea    David LloydAubade    William LoganRiver Dolphins    Michael S. BegnalSruth Fada Con    Barry JohnstonWanting Choughs    Tony CurtisDouble View of the Adirondacks as Reflected over Lake Champlain from WaterfrontPark    Major JacksonPortage    Alice AzurePart 3. Planetary CurrentsThe Lariat and the GPS: Cowboys, Cattle Ranching, and Global Agricultural Practices    Nancy S. CookLife on the Western Edge of It All: Conceptions of Place in Tess Gallagher’s Lough Arrow Poems    Drucilla WallReturn to Finland, Robert Creeley, Continental Drift    Eamonn WallExcerpts from COSMOGRAPHY: Re-Minding Our Place in the Universe    Joel Weishaus    Poetry 3: Planetary CurrentsAsking Why    Marge SaiserThe Dark Sky Reserve    Heid E. ErdrichOrnithological Perspectives    Walter BargenSpiritus Mundi    Greg DelantyStrange    Aliki BarnstoneKiller Butterfly    Walter BargenWhen the Body    Linda HoganWhat I Keep    Linda HoganWar Memorial    Katherine SoniatBulk        Daniel TobinAll Hallows’ Eve, County Mayo    Joan McBreenAs the Diamond    Tess GallagherThe Burden of Theology    Kelly CherryA Line from Dogen    Walter BargenContributors