Customer Reviews

Sierra Songs & Descants

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This book is so tasty that I'm making myself NOT eat the whole thing in one sitting. I'm savoring it during many gourmet indulgences.
Molly Fisk's "At Home on the Page" describes the writing scene in Nevada City, the ground first mined for this collection. But the creativity reaches beyond the local ore, and gems from other locales fit comfortably chronicled within the four seasons that organize the book.
To initiate "Spring," Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge's "First Words" celebrates the joy and addiction of writing, the allure of the right sound in the right place, or the intriguing sound in search of the fertile moment.
Summer is not so idealistic, as shown in Gail Rudd Entrekin's "Accidents," a poem that sensitively reminds us that what seems ordinary rarely is, and the playing field never was, or will be, level.
Charles Entrekin's "Hay Stacker" takes me back to the exuberance of adolescence, when innocence could barely be contained as it pounded against the gates of experience, and everything--that is, everything wonderful--was possible.
But then Fall comes, and Gary Snyder's "What to Tell, Still" confronts me: I do know some things, but I don't know others--and how do I know which is which?
In the Winter section, I'm heartened by Merilee Richards' "Surviving." To cope when we have lost all that seems to matter, I think we need love, time, patience, strength, and books like this.

The collections of stories and poems all have the theme of the outdoors and about real often conflicted people. The collection is organized around the seasons of the year with "Spring", "Treetopper", "Psalm" and "A Taste of Snow".

I especially enjoyed the story "It All Ends Up in the Same Place" by Benjamin Jahn. It is a story about two rough hewn young men living in and around the small towns in the mountains. The mental pictures are clear of nature and the unique characters of the story. They do not have much going for them. They just live, drink and drive in the hills. They pick up a young women hitchhiker who has plenty of life. The mental vision of what rains from the sky is both a surprise and what must be an amazing sight.

It must be Spring because the bugs is hatchin! Great job!

I am drawn to collections of poetry and prose; however, I sometimes feel that I know where the whole anthology is going from the first few pieces. The stories start to run together, yet the sum of the whole is not equal to the deeper-running soul of a great novel. This is not the case, miraculously, with Sierra Songs and Descants. There is such a vast array of offerings here; such unique and daring voices are presented. What soaring, exquisite poetry from Gary Short, what shimmering, thoughtful prose from Sands Hall and Louis B. Jones. To list all the jewels would be to name nearly every contributor in the book. The few pieces which did not thoroughly engage me were simply not my forms of choice--their quality was still undeniable. In general, I found myself itching to turn the page for the surprise of what might come next and forcing myself to close the book so it would not end so quickly. Yet this is not a hodge-podge of unrelated works: there is a thread of connection here, and although I could not put my finger to what the glue that binds it is, I enjoyed throughout my reading a felt sense of tender revelation. My conclusion, after the satisfied (and regretful) sigh of completion, was that the thing which holds this book together--and held me so riveted--is the deep and enduring quality of the writing. Bravo for a breathtaking gift of literature.