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Shorewords »

Book cover image of Shorewords by Jennifer Ackerman

Authors: Jennifer Ackerman, Gloria E. Anzaldua, Kerry Neville Bakken
ISBN-13: 9780813922331, ISBN-10: 081392233X
Format: Paperback
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Date Published: January 2003
Edition: (Non-applicable)

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Author Biography: Jennifer Ackerman

Susan A. C. Rosen, Professor of English at Anne Arundel Community College, is the author of numerous articles on American literature and the environment.

Book Synopsis

Emily Dickinson, Lucille Clifton, Rachel Carson, and Gretel Ehrlich: They hail from different regions, employ widely divergent writing styles, and are not known primarily as nature writers. Yet in Shorewords, Susan A. C. Rosen has compiled an imaginative and beautifully balanced anthology of selections from these and more than forty other important writers connected by their love for the coastline. Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Low Tide," E. Annie Proulx's "Cast Away," Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Naomi," and Ursula Le Guin's "Text" are among the diverse pieces that reveal the writers' common fascination with the people and places at water's edge. Organized thematically, Shorewords reflects women's experiences of living along the coast through a wide range of material, including short fiction, poetry, and excerpts from novels and memoirs. All reveal the rich response to shorelines women writers have expressed — and continue to express — in poetry and prose.

Includes: Jennifer Ackerman
• Nancy Allen
• Gloria Anzaldúa
• Kerry Neville Bakken
• Dorothy Balano
• Andrea Barrett
• Doris Betts
• Kate Braverman
• Mary Louisa Burtch Brewster
• Mary Parker Buckles
• Rachel L. Carson
• Kate Chopin
• Amy Clampitt
• Lucille Sayles Clifton
• Wanda Coleman
• Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis
• Jan DeBlieu
• Emily Dickinson
• Joan Didion
• Annie Dillard
• Gretel Ehrlich
• Anita Endrezze
• Diane P. Freedman
• Tess Gallagher
• Susan Glaspell
• Mary Hood
• Cynthia Huntington
• Sarah Orne Jewett
• Mary Karr
• Susan Kenney
• Carolyn Kizer
• Ursula K. Le Guin
• Denise Levertov
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• Nancy Lord
• Sandra McPherson
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Marianne Moore
• Ruth Moore
• Sena Jeter Naslund
• Gloria Naylor
• Mary Oliver
• Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
• E. Annie Proulx
• May Sarton
• Elizabeth Spencer
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• May Swenson
• Sara Teasdale
• Celia Thaxter

Table of Contents

Preface
Naomi7
Mara9
Out of the Sea12
The Outside37
The Women Who Raised Goats47
El otro Mexico48
Fall, 1855, the settlement called Whatcom50
From Among the Isles of Shoals59
A White Heron65
Memory of Cape Cod74
Impression: Fog off the Coast of Dorset75
From The Liars' Club75
Small Craft Warnings92
Vigil104
The Marginal World123
Channelled Whelk128
The Outer Bar134
Singled Out135
Warning135
At the Shore136
Santa Rosa137
The Edge141
Prologue, from Notes from the Shore145
Osprey, from Notes from the Shore148
The Shore160
Intertidal Zone165
Edge Effect167
Wild Nights - Wild Nights!175
I started Early - took my Dog175
From The Story of Avis176
Sea Longing186
Woman on Sand186
The Mapmaker's Daughter188
First Things First189
Ocean Water Absorbs Red, Orange, and Yellow Light199
The Littoral Zone201
Inland215
On the Edge216
A Subject of the Waves217
Beach Glass219
From Mama Day221
Cast Away223
A Rolling Hitch228
Bebe Sellars: May 1968238
Old Christmas247
From The Weir257
Quiet Days in Malibu265
3 a.m. Kitchen: My Father Talking275
Boat Ride276
Putting Up Boat282
Blessing the boats293
Crabbing293
From The Awakening299
On the Dunes302
To the Sea303
Exiled303
Burial304
Low-Tide305
The Fish305
A Grave307
Preface, from The Houes by the Sea308
Tuesday, October 7th, from The House by the Sea312
Texts314
Sailing316
The Great Blue Heron332
From The Salt Line334
A Whale of a Different Color - Melville and the Movies: The Great White
Whale and Free Willy343
A Season on Maui355
On this wondrous sea358
Exultation is the going359
December 11, 1912. (At home in Herring Gut, known to the better element as Port Clyde.)359
Back in the U.S.A.365
The Cabin Boy370
Notes on Authors379
Acknowledgments389

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