The Portable Western Reader

Table Of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: “West of Your Town: Another Country” by William Kittredge
Suggestions for Further Reading
Part One: Ancient Stories
Introduction
Washington Matthews, “House Made of the Dawn” (Navajo night chant)
A. L. Kroeber, “The Woman and the Horse,” from Gros Ventre Myths and Tales
Catharine McClellan, “The Girl Who Married the Bear”
Jarold Ramsey, “Coyote and Eagle Go to the Land of the Dead”
C. C. Uhlenbeck, “How the Ancient Peigans Lived” (Blackfeet tale)
James Welch, from Fools Crow
James Mooney, from The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890
Linda Hogan, from Mean Spirit
John Graves, “The Last Running”
Louise Erdrich, “Fleur”
Joy Harjo, “Deer Dancer”
Part Two: Transcending the Western
Introduction
Walt Whitman, “Song of the Redwood-Tree” from Leaves of Grass
e. e. cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s”
D. H. Lawrence, from “Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales,” in Studies in Classic American Literature
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, from the Journals
A. B. Guthrie Jr., from The Big Sky
Teddy Blue Abbott, from We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher
O. E. Rolvaag, from Giants in the Earth
Elinore Rupert Stewart, from Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Wallace Stegner, “Carrion Spring,” from Wolf Willow
Mari Sandoz, from Old Jules
Dorothy M. Johnson, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Jack London, “A Raid on the Oyster Pirates”
JOhn Steinbeck, “The Squatters’ Camps,” from The Harvest Gypsies
Robinson Jeffers, “Eagle Valor, Chicken Mind”
Ernest Hemingway, “The Clark’s Fork Valley, Wyoming”
Theodore Roethke, “All Morning”
“The Far Field”
Norman Maclean, from A River Runs Through It
Wright Morris, from Ceremony in Lone Tree
John Haines, “If the Owl Calls Again,” from The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer
from “Three Days,” in The Stars, the Snow, the Fire
Ivan Doig, from This House of Sky
Larry McMurtry, “Take My Saddle from the Wall: A Valediction”
Mary Clearman Brew, from All But the Waltz
Part Three: Our Own Stories
Introduction
W. H. Auden, “The West from the Air,” from The Dyer’s Hand
Galway Kinnell, “The Bear”
William Stafford, “Traveling Through the Dark”
“Help from History”
“Paso por Aqui“
“Late, Passing Prairie Farm”
David Wagoner, “A Guide to Dungeness Spit”
Ken Kesey, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Thomas McGrath, “Legends, Heroes, Myth-Figures and Other American Liars”
“The Pleasures of the Great Salt Lake”
“Longing”
Keith Wilson, “The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians”
Edward Abbey, from Desert Solitaire
Gary Snyder, “Above Pate Valley”
“Painting the North San Juan School”
“Getting in the Wood”
“Dillingham, Alaska, the Willow Tree Bar”
Richard Hugo, “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg”
“The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field”
“Silver Star”
“Driving Montana”
“Fort Benton”
“Duwamish”
“Salt Water Story”
Philip Levine, “Sierra Kid”
“Soloing”
Richard Shelton, “The Hole”
“The Stones”
Maxine Hong Kingston, “American Father,” from China Men
Raymond Carver, “My Father’s Life”
Richard Ford, “Communist”
David Quammen, “Orphan Calves,” from “Walking Out”
Thomas McGuane, “The Heart of the Game”
Rick Demarinis, “Paraiso: An Elegy”
Greg Pape, “Some Names”
“Blessing at the Citadel”
Tess Gallagher, “Cougar Meat”
“The Borrowed Ones”
Part Four: Brilliant Possibilities
Introduction
Czeslaw Milosz, “To Robinson Jeffers”
N. Scott Momaday, from The Names: A Memoir
Robert Hass, “On the Coast near Sausalito”
“On Squaw Peak”
Gretel Ehrlich, “On Water,” from The Solace of Open Spaces
Leslie Marmon Silko, “Storyteller”
Marilynne Robinson, from Housekeeping
David Long, “Lightning”
Pattiann Rogers, “A Passing”
“Why Lost Divinity Remains Lost”
Garrett Hongo, “Yellow Light”
“What For”
Robert Wrigley, “Ravens at Deer Creek”
“Majestic”
Alberto Rios, “The Secret Lion,” from The Iguana Killer
Jimmy Santiago Baca, from “Martin,” in Martin and Meditations on the South Valley #Section V#
Ray Gonzalez, “Snakeskin (A Dream)”
“Talk with the Priest”
James Galvin, “Water Table”
“Coming into His Shop from a Bright Afternoon,” from The Meadow
Terry Tempest Williams, “The Clan of One-Breasted Women,” from Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
Richard K. Nelson, “The Gifts of Deer,” from The Island Within
Adrian C. Louis, “In the Ghetto on the Prairie There Is Unrequited Love”
“Sometimes a Warrior Comes Tired”
“America Loomed Before Us”
Sherman Alexie, “The Business of Fancydancing”
“My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys”
Barry Lopez, “The Passing Wisdom of Birds”
Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California”