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Earthbound
A Western poetry book filled with images of the land, its creatures, and the Western way of life.
92 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2019
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 21, 2019
O’Toole writes from her roots connecting her to the sagebrush steppe and rugged mountains of the Rocky Mountain West. Her poems are an eloquent homage to landscape, stories placed like ripples in mountain streams, some gentle, some turbulent.
O’Toole writes with feeling about both the domestic and wild animals which share the same rangelands with humans. The poems tell personal stories of human-animal bonds, and as well as inevitable human-animal conflicts. She shares the personalities of the seasons of the year, and the weather. The gentle hands, and the hard work, of fellow shepherds – some of which arrived here to this range as temporary residents from far-away countries and cultures, but leave lasting impressions.
The poems are moody, melancholy, joyful, and funny – an honest story telling from the American West, full of history and characters, and an unmistakable sense of place
O’Toole writes with feeling about both the domestic and wild animals which share the same rangelands with humans. The poems tell personal stories of human-animal bonds, and as well as inevitable human-animal conflicts. She shares the personalities of the seasons of the year, and the weather. The gentle hands, and the hard work, of fellow shepherds – some of which arrived here to this range as temporary residents from far-away countries and cultures, but leave lasting impressions.
The poems are moody, melancholy, joyful, and funny – an honest story telling from the American West, full of history and characters, and an unmistakable sense of place
February 15, 2020
These are poems of Wyoming, the state I was born in and came back to. These are poems of hard thankless work, dust, blistering cold and simmering heat, leather and oil, blood, birth, life and death. These are poems of sheep and cattle, crows and coyotes, and of this beautiful and severe backcountry. These poems brought me back to melancholy moments from my childhood of cattle brandings and other ranch work I’d occasionally participate in.
In these poems, you don’t just hear the songs of the Red Desert of Wyoming, you also hear the songs of the Peruvian sheep hands, their dreams of home and family back in their South American country.
These poems aren’t only gritty and hard; there are glimpses of compassion, sorrow, excitement, love and nostalgia.
This collection will make you feel everything. What an apt title as well; it’s like O’Toole’s poems have bled up out of the land itself.
In these poems, you don’t just hear the songs of the Red Desert of Wyoming, you also hear the songs of the Peruvian sheep hands, their dreams of home and family back in their South American country.
These poems aren’t only gritty and hard; there are glimpses of compassion, sorrow, excitement, love and nostalgia.
This collection will make you feel everything. What an apt title as well; it’s like O’Toole’s poems have bled up out of the land itself.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews