Great Lonely Places of the Texas Plains

Great Lonely Places of the Texas Plains
Author: Walter McDonald
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780896725065

Clarity, focus, and startling detail are the stuff of lasting images--in poetry or photography. Who better, then, to illuminate what would elude us than a native state photographer and native state poet laureate? Selected from hundreds of photographs and poems, these pairs show surprising harmony of vision and insights about the vast, wide plains, their dramatic colors, and the calm, vigorous people who thrive beneath their sprawling skies, accepting the risks and splendor of it all. Together and on their own, these photos and poems astonish and delight, stagger and jostle, each resonating with texture and joy.

Generations of Texas Poets

Generations of Texas Poets
Author: Oliphant, Dave
Publisher: Wings Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2015-10-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1609404823

Dave Oliphant is widely considered the finest poetry critic ever produced by Texas. This volume brings together some 40 years of essays, articles, and reviews on the topic of Texas poetry -- its history as well as addressing individual poets and their books. Only one other book in the last two decades addressed the topic, and GENERATIONS OF TEXAS POETS is larger, more comprehensive, and of superior literary quality. In 1971, Larry McMurtry famously descried the lack of good Texas poetry; Oliphant has spent a lifetime nurturing it, publishing it, and has become its best critic.

A Thousand Miles of Stars

A Thousand Miles of Stars
Author: Walter McDonald
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2004
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780896725386

2005 SPUR Award WinnerA West Texas starscape, stunning by any measure, is emblematic of Walt McDonald?s plains. A lifelong celebration culminates in this, his best?and perhaps last?collection of new poems. At seventy, the poet affirms, we live by the mystery of grace even as we watch familiar stars blink out at dawn. For he believes ?God knows we are dust / and counts our steps.? In ?Leaving the Middle Years,? he writes, ?At our age, / every day is grace and every breath / a blessing. Life is grass, stunningly brief / but abundant in so many ways.?Walt writes about heroes?a mother who taught tumbling; family and friends gone to war; the brave at home who heal or console; others who rescue from war zones as many children as they can. Heroes, too, are those whose fidelity and joy find faces in these poems. Watching crows at dawn in Montana, a husband thinks of his wife inside their mountain cabin:If Ursula finds more grayshe?ll go on humming, knowing it?s okay,our children three thousand miles awaybut fine, when they called last night.She comes outside with coffee,closing the door so softlyeven the crows don?t stop.

Knight on the Texas Plains

Knight on the Texas Plains
Author: Linda Broday
Publisher: Leisure Books
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780843951202

Duel McCain is a gambling drifter, but a poker game soon thrusts him into the role of father to an abandoned baby. Then a beautiful but condemned woman stumbles upon his campfire. The fugitive beauty aims to keep Duel at arm's length, but she and the baby are clearly made for each other. Worse, the innocent infant and alleged murderess open Duel's heart, making him long for a real family.

Writing on the Wind

Writing on the Wind
Author: Lou Halsell Rodenberger
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780896725485

The vast, disparate region called West Texas is both sparsely populated and scarcely recognized. Yet it has given voice to a surprising number of women writers who have left more than a faint impression on its hardscrabble terrain and consciousness. These writers do much more than evoke the land and its celebrated skies. Often with humor and alw...

Unruly Waters

Unruly Waters
Author: Kenna Lang Archer
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826355889

Running more than 1,200 miles from headwaters in eastern New Mexico through the middle of Texas to the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazos River has frustrated developers for nearly two centuries. This environmental history of the Brazos traces the techniques that engineers and politicians have repeatedly used to try to manage its flow. The vast majority of projects proposed or constructed in this watershed were failures, undone by the geology of the river as much as the cost of improvement. When developers erected locks, the river changed course. When they built large-scale dams, floodwaters overflowed the concrete rims. When they constructed levees, the soils collapsed. Yet lawmakers and laypeople, boosters and engineers continued to work toward improving the river and harnessing it for various uses. Through the plight of the Brazos River Archer illuminates the broader commentary on the efforts to tame this nation’s rivers as well as its historical perspectives on development and technology. The struggle to overcome nature, Archer notes, reflects a quintessentially American faith in technology.

The Great Plains

The Great Plains
Author: Walter Prescott Webb
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 544
Release: 1959-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803297029

A study of the changes initiated into the systems and culture of the plain dwellers

The Book Lover's Tour of Texas

The Book Lover's Tour of Texas
Author: Jessie Gunn Stephens
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2004
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781589791442

This book takes readers on a literary ride across the Lone Star State. J. Frank Dobie tells true stories of rattlesnakes and buried treasure, Jodi Thomas finds romance in the oilfields.

Amarillo Flights

Amarillo Flights
Author: Paul V. Chaplo
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2021-08-16
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1623498872

Visitors to Texas and New Mexico have marveled for centuries at the immensity of the Llano Estacado and the surprising contrast as, at the edges of the great mesa, the flat ground gives way suddenly to such spectacular formations as the Palo Duro and Caprock Canyons. In the introduction to Amarillo Flights, artist and naturalist Walt Davis chronicle the history of this region—what Paul Chaplo calls the “Llano Country”—and of those artists, mapmakers, and travelers who have tried in various ways to capture its spirit. Working in “the vast studio of the sky,” aerial photographer Chaplo has battled high winds, turbulence, dust, ice, near-miss bird strikes, wildfire smoke, and a host of aircraft problems to show the Llano Country from a place most of us will never be. Covering more than forty thousand square miles, he explores the incredible beauty and rich cultural history of the Panhandle and the surrounding landscapes, from canyons in New Mexico and Texas to hills and plains in Oklahoma. With the help of daring pilots, numerous aircraft, and a remarkably steady hand, Chaplo manages to capture in more than 100 striking photographs the shapes, textures, and colors of the rugged landforms that cannot be perceived fully from the ground. Sharing in his unique view from the southwestern sky, readers will experience from afar—and sometimes impossibly close—the sunlit canyons, storm-covered plains, and winding rivers cutting deep into the red earth that drew Chaplo to this region. For those who appreciate the Llano Estacado, Texas and Eastern New Mexico history, and landscape photography, this book provides a fresh and perception-challenging perspective.