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Magpie Rising: Sketches from the Great Plains
The rolling, billowing, delicate landscape of Nebraska’s Sandhills; the tombstone of Billy the Kid—stolen so often that it must be caged and shackled—in Fort Sumner, New Mexico; an intercontinental ballistic missile trundling down a highway under heavy guard in Weld County, Colorado; cottonwoods and cranes, faded hotels and abandoned trailers painted aqua and purple; the ghosts of Pawnees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas and generations of settlers whose descendants now grouse in a café in Heimdahl, North Dakota, or roar off to a bikers convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. These are some of the things that catch Merrill Gilfillan’s eye and ear in this radiant collection of essays.
Written with a poetic economy that often attains grandeur, Magpie Rising is an exhilarating tour of the Great Plains—its geography, wildlife, history, mythology, and food, its vast spaces and weirdly synchronous time. This is nature writing at its most evocative and insightful.
Written with a poetic economy that often attains grandeur, Magpie Rising is an exhilarating tour of the Great Plains—its geography, wildlife, history, mythology, and food, its vast spaces and weirdly synchronous time. This is nature writing at its most evocative and insightful.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 2, 2019
I much preferred his Chokecherry Places.
April 9, 2012
This book is a collection of the author's notes, impressions, vignettes, short essays and verbal fragments (he calls them "sketches"). They were written during 1983-86 as Gilfillian crisscrossed the Great Plains from Canada to Texas (he says he drove 50,000 miles), stopping here and there - sometimes in cities and small towns, sometimes off-road - to take out a sharpened pencil and note what was there to be "noticed."
Gilfillian is a poet with language, and his perceptions are informed by a wide knowledge of music, literature and civilizations past and present. Each piece can be read multiple times, like poems, to wring more meaning and feeling from them. The stories he draws on from Indian history are often compelling. And I especially enjoyed his longer essay on the Nebraska Sandhills, along with thoughts about the Nebraska writers Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz.
Recommended reading for anyone fascinated by the vastness of the high plains and its impact on those who have lived there - in a splendid kind of isolation. Also recommended: Ian Frazier's "Great Plains."
Gilfillian is a poet with language, and his perceptions are informed by a wide knowledge of music, literature and civilizations past and present. Each piece can be read multiple times, like poems, to wring more meaning and feeling from them. The stories he draws on from Indian history are often compelling. And I especially enjoyed his longer essay on the Nebraska Sandhills, along with thoughts about the Nebraska writers Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz.
Recommended reading for anyone fascinated by the vastness of the high plains and its impact on those who have lived there - in a splendid kind of isolation. Also recommended: Ian Frazier's "Great Plains."
March 31, 2020
Poet Merrill Gilfillan is among my favorite prose stylists (along with Ellen Meloy and Reg Saner). "Magpie Rising" was his first collection of essays, but it was not the first of his collections that I read (that would have been "Chokecherry Places," which is his best collection, in my opinion). In fact, I came to "Magpie Rising" after having read several other Gilfillan essay collections. I began this book in 2018, then put it down after having read about three-quarters of the essays because I got busy moving and because, frankly, I just was not extraordinarily compelled to finish the book. I took it up again lately and finished the last few essays.
The writing in "Magpie Rising" is, like all of Gilfillan's prose, very lyrical and evocative, but the writing is ethereal and hard to pin down. As he continued to write prose, Gilfillan's writing became a bit more "grounded" and easier to appreciate.
The writing in "Magpie Rising" is, like all of Gilfillan's prose, very lyrical and evocative, but the writing is ethereal and hard to pin down. As he continued to write prose, Gilfillan's writing became a bit more "grounded" and easier to appreciate.
March 29, 2013
Mostly a worthwhile read, if you're in a meditative frame of mind. Gilfillan describes the plains in even more loving detail than Stegner does...indeed that's really all this book is about. This makes it a little ponderous and overbearing at times, and occasionally his florid metaphors fall on their faces--ornate language that sounds fine but leaves me ultimately feeling empty. What does he mean by this exactly (describing Willa Cather's old homestead):
"So we are given a human life incandescent in its arc, an Antonia of heartbreak and blossom, or the fated lovers beneath an apple tree in O Pioneers. And the galvanic thoughts of their various actual vectors are nearly matched in intensity by thoughts of the warm gifted eye that saw it all and chose it, and the cool lean prose that set it down amid the manifold flows and currents of the daily species. Here at this house the process and the spark of it all are nearly tangible. A human life and a sharp pencil. The sharper the pencil the finer the line, the sparer the accompaniment, the higher the solo parts. And the life stands out then, as the act of noticing stands out, in its passion and cartilege through the fine tracery of its line."
OK, not only does he demonstrate his utter ignorance of musical composition (spare accompaniment, high solo parts...yeah it happens, but presented as a rule...?), he also lauds 'cool lean prose' while demonstrating his inability to use it himself.
Bummer. His pretension really gets in his way considering the gritty, primal locations he is describing and the ephemeral, sometimes cruel societies that have existed there.
That doesn't mean there aren't soaring passages that capture beautifully the secret bio-diversity and geological excitement of a massive region mostly taken to be a dial-tone wasteland. The chapter in which he describes his years-long search for a rare bird in the Dakotas, and the joy of the eventual, surprising sighting, is very moving.
My existing sympathy for the subject matter is the only thing that helped me limp through the book, though. I worry that this kind of writing tends to make it less likely, not more, that readers will come to share his obviously deep appreciation for these countrysides.
"So we are given a human life incandescent in its arc, an Antonia of heartbreak and blossom, or the fated lovers beneath an apple tree in O Pioneers. And the galvanic thoughts of their various actual vectors are nearly matched in intensity by thoughts of the warm gifted eye that saw it all and chose it, and the cool lean prose that set it down amid the manifold flows and currents of the daily species. Here at this house the process and the spark of it all are nearly tangible. A human life and a sharp pencil. The sharper the pencil the finer the line, the sparer the accompaniment, the higher the solo parts. And the life stands out then, as the act of noticing stands out, in its passion and cartilege through the fine tracery of its line."
OK, not only does he demonstrate his utter ignorance of musical composition (spare accompaniment, high solo parts...yeah it happens, but presented as a rule...?), he also lauds 'cool lean prose' while demonstrating his inability to use it himself.
Bummer. His pretension really gets in his way considering the gritty, primal locations he is describing and the ephemeral, sometimes cruel societies that have existed there.
That doesn't mean there aren't soaring passages that capture beautifully the secret bio-diversity and geological excitement of a massive region mostly taken to be a dial-tone wasteland. The chapter in which he describes his years-long search for a rare bird in the Dakotas, and the joy of the eventual, surprising sighting, is very moving.
My existing sympathy for the subject matter is the only thing that helped me limp through the book, though. I worry that this kind of writing tends to make it less likely, not more, that readers will come to share his obviously deep appreciation for these countrysides.
October 30, 2010
Gilfillan, whose family is from the Great Plains, but who grew up in Ohio, writes about the desert plains of West Texas, the Nebraska Black HIlls landscape, the area of Eastern Colorado around the Cimarron River, and the towns and roads of the upper Missouri. What ties these differing landscapes together is Gilfillan's habit of "al fresca" writing -- writing outdoors. The book is based in description, little concerned to expose Gilfillan's family or professional circumstances, and lyrically attuned to questions of cuisine, biotic capital, and local history -- especially the histories of countless native American tribes who have inhabited the region before the author. The book emerges from a scholarly immersion in local byways as they trace the lineages of struggle between indigenous and pioneer settlers, and could be described as geographical history -- much in the tradition of William Gilpin, Carl O. Sauer, and Williams' In the American Grain. It is as far from negligible as I can imagine.
November 25, 2007
This book is for people who like the names of rivers, and every now and again Gilfillan drops in a sentence or two about food that make the simplest food sound like the tastiest in the world (like a tiny Hibachi grill will new potatoes wrapped in foil and leftover roasted chicken, and the author sitting in a lawn chair watching the sun set into the Great Plains, etc.).
This isn't really "travel literature," though. That's how they blurb it, but it smacks of something different. As a prefatory note says, it really is an experiment in prose poetry.
I looked to this book as I did the latest Weinberger book of essays An Elemental Thing, as possibilities for the essay form.
This isn't really "travel literature," though. That's how they blurb it, but it smacks of something different. As a prefatory note says, it really is an experiment in prose poetry.
I looked to this book as I did the latest Weinberger book of essays An Elemental Thing, as possibilities for the essay form.
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July 9, 2008Makes me want to get in a car and drive, drive, drive
August 22, 2008
Gilfillan's poetic prose captures the Great Plains like no other work.
March 10, 2010
Gilfillan is one of those wonderfully excellent writers that are so easy to miss. His slim books capture many of the places that I have spent my life in: the high plains of the west.
February 14, 2011
Gorgeous, sparse essays. At moments, you can almost feel the wind on your face. Really wonderful homage to the American plains.
May 6, 2012
Interesting collection of regional lyric essays. Extra half a star for bird themes.
October 28, 2015
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13671551
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13671551
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews