A compendium of poems about the Western United States by the esteemed poet William Pitt Root
FREE Two-Day Shipping for students on millions of items. Learn more |
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- Buy $50 in qualifying physical textbooks, get $5 in Amazon MP3 Credit. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
William Pitt Root's early poems showed me how the natural world can illuminate the personal, the intimate truths of our lives. In this new work he lets the western landscape speak not only through the voices of its inhabitants, but also as itself, a presence that causes the poet to wonder "what is it that notices/me as I pass,/ what sensibility thrives/in all that terrible vigilance of grass." To the mystic, each blade of grass is fierce with meaning. In these poems, Root claims that same intensity of vision for the poet. --Kathryn Stripling Byer, NC Poet Laureate
To the list of great poets whose names are synonymous with the places they describe, Stafford's Northwest, Frost's New England, Levine's Detroit, Charles Wright's Appalachian Trilogy, you can now add William Pitt Root's White Boots: New and Selected Poems of West, poems of tender awe and Rilkean praise erasing completely the divisions between man and beast, poems that invite the reader upon their back and carry him across buttes and vistas, arroyos and sheer cliff shimmy holes, poems whose music is wound so tight that the stitches and sinews disappear and all that remains is the pure imagination made manifest and majestic, the reader alone on the plain riding their shine. --Keith Flynn, Asheville Poetry Review
"William Pitt Root writes rangy, virile, pantheistic Western poetry with unusual flair [and] great sophistication of language; his clarity and poise, as much as his pungency and force, startle. Marvelous poems." --James Schulyer, New York Times, review of
To the list of great poets whose names are synonymous with the places they describe, Stafford's Northwest, Frost's New England, Levine's Detroit, Charles Wright's Appalachian Trilogy, you can now add William Pitt Root's White Boots: New and Selected Poems of West, poems of tender awe and Rilkean praise erasing completely the divisions between man and beast, poems that invite the reader upon their back and carry him across buttes and vistas, arroyos and sheer cliff shimmy holes, poems whose music is wound so tight that the stitches and sinews disappear and all that remains is the pure imagination made manifest and majestic, the reader alone on the plain riding their shine. --Keith Flynn, Asheville Poetry Review
"William Pitt Root writes rangy, virile, pantheistic Western poetry with unusual flair [and] great sophistication of language; his clarity and poise, as much as his pungency and force, startle. Marvelous poems." --James Schulyer, New York Times, review of
About the Author
WILLIAM PITT ROOT now writes full-time in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado. For a decade he commuted weekly between Tucson, where he was poet laureate 1997-2001, and Manhattan, where he taught at Hunter College. Root's other works include The Storm and Other Poems (2005/1969) and Trace Elements from a Recurring Kingdom (Notable Book for 1995, The Nation) which re-collects his first five books. His work appears in The Atlantic, New Yorker, APR, The Nation, in hundreds of litmags and anthologies, and in nearly twenty languages.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
White Boots--No Poet Is Writing Better Than This,
By
This review is from: White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West (Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series) (Paperback)
What you will find in William Pitt Root's White Boots is "the stuff of fields and forests/ the odor of earth freshly stirred." This is poetry by an American master, offering one man's lucid vision of what Allen Ginsberg named "Planetary News." As an added benefit, Root's writing offers wisdom--quite a bargain; ten bucks gets you music and magnificent language, plus directions on finding those elusive handholds without which our existence is barren; "no leaf is the tree, no tree the land." These reflections cast by his words mirror the treasure all about us, uncover the seep that quenches us as "blinking our way blindly into the dark canyon," we go on. While there is the temptation "to remain among stones/ a stone" there is a greater pull for "the living [to] keep hold of the things/ that bind them to those gone."
White Boots is a work of illumination by a writer who urges us "to stay in touch while the sun burns on." In "Above Blackhawk Where Air Gets Thin," a cat and mouse game takes place between ferret and chipmonk. The struggle is over quickly; we're told "No drama at all." On the contrary, Root has fashioned the great drama which we witness in all of his work, the elemental, everyday struggle that engages us whether we participate or not. He reminds us constantly of the sanctity of the beasts--he is insistent on this-- who share equal footing with humans in his life and his art. Slugs, wolf dogs and owls are featured and it's rare to find judgement passed by the poet. Perhaps that is what shocks when reading the ending of the brilliant "At the Foot of Holy Mountain"--"all the idiots of appetite/ pursue each other blindly/ by the jeweled light of their jeweled eyes." Is he speaking of predator and prey as described in the poem or is this line the succinct portrait of 21st century man and woman? William Pitt Root does keep his "tools sharp" (check out his other books to see what I mean) and he instructs us that "we shine, and the world/ everywhere around us/ gives us back/ our shining." Buy this book (this work of love and humanity) and journey with the poet through the American West and beyond "utterly ablaze in the ark of the skull."
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ultimately, an uneven collection of poems,
By
This review is from: White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West (Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series) (Paperback)
*White Boots* is an uneven collection of poetry. Though all of the poems flow well and work. I found the connection they make with the reader sometimes lacking. Some of the poems in the collection are down right great, such as "CRAFT" in which Root fleshes out what the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest have lost in just over 200 words...and it really sticks with you. And, in "ABOVE BLACKHAWK WHERE AIR GETS THIN" he captures the essence of forest wildlife in even fewer words. Other poems such as the title poem, "WHITE BOOTS" work well and leave a bit of an after thought behind.
But other poems in this collection just left nothing behind for me...an important trait in a good poem. The read well, the prose works, but the connection is just not there. When I acquired this book, I had looked forward to reading it based on a few poems read in the store...unfortunately, the collection as a whole was a bit of let down on the emotional connection. >>>>>>><<<<<<< A Guide to my Book Rating System: 1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper. 2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead. 3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted. 4 stars = Good book, but not life altering. 5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
As you know, Jim, I did work underground in the same mine you've imagined in your studio: half a mile down, taking wages enough to make it to California and fool's gold enough to remind me I don't know much after all. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
White Boots, Miles City New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
As you know, Jim, I did work underground in the same mine you've imagined in your studio: half a mile down, taking wages enough to make it to California and fool's gold enough to remind me I don't know much after all. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
White Boots, Miles City New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
