Loren Eiseley Ideas

Ideas and Art of Loren Eiseley

Loren Eiseley and Rachel Carson

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When the PBS American Experience story of Rachel Carson aired this week,  some might speculate as to what Loren Eiseley thought of the book when it appeared. Wikipedia's page on Rachel Carson's groundbreaking Silent Spring cites Loren Eiseley as a … [Read more]

What a Mesoscale Convective System Tells You

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In August 2016, the skies opened up on Louisiana: two feet of rain. The results were ruinous for many residents, with 32" measured near Watson, LA and dangerous levels experienced on the Amite and Comite rivers. From the Wikipedia page for the … [Read more]

So Separate from Me at Death

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Loren Eiseley's biographers Gerber and McFadden believed that the end of Eiseley's "The Innocent Fox" represents an exploration of "the greatest miracle of all, human memory." They wrote: It is a delicate and haunting piece of writing. Imitating … [Read more]

Behind the Mask

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Now there are left these broken sockets bare Lost in the crumbling of the ruined clays. As shattered bone, a broken claw or two, Speak faintly of the leopard-footed grace That walked these hills at evening, so must you At some far … [Read more]

Lost Unforgettable Seas

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I, in the desert, the first of those deserts which will later engulf the whole earth, gaze westward at Venus, hazily thinking how, in Time's future, the people in cities clustering our dying ice cap will yearn from a myriad housetops toward … [Read more]

Something Wild in the Earth

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There is something wild in the earth. Both living and dying ask a blood sacrifice. I could easily choose to step back that scattering of centuries and seek mound burial -- with the best white stallion led down to go with me. I have had … [Read more]

Warning to Lovers

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Verse from "Warning to Lovers," published in All the Night Wings They are the lovers of too permanent things Who clasp too long one woman, one bright sin -- Growing aware of time! Ah, take the road To windy places where the blown sand … [Read more]

Loren Eiseley Rag Dolls on Radiolab

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The "Beginning of the End" episode of WNYC Radiolab featured Robert Krulwich @RKrulwich reading from Loren Eiseley in "The Star Thrower," which appeared in The Unexpected Universe: We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings … [Read more]

The Fuel I Have Been

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They are burning the cornfields now. In the mellow dust, In the leaf-mold moon when the pumpkins go to town, They are burning the cornfields up, and the wind-warped smoke Trails mountain-blue in the fields and the stubborn brown.   Hills go … [Read more]

The Narrow Skies

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To have walked cold through this still living house, Looking on all things with indifferent eyes, Hating the light, the sun, the fool's applause, Is to have measured how the narrow skies Contract to dark, how easily one word Shatters the green … [Read more]

Sustainability

renewable-energy

RSS Inside the Ordinary (reviews)

  • One Earthling
    A Review of Earthling: A New Ethics for the Anthropocene by Dean Wallraff I’ve written a handful of reviews for authors I’ve known, but none whose narrative includes the author’s remarkable — and relevant — life story. Privy as I am to some of this author’s personal history, some of which is readily shared in […]
  • Elevating the Ordinary: Gravity vs. Karl Ove Knausgaard
    Karl Ove Knausgaard's Summer, like the season it marks, is as much about the heat of dissipation and as it is of lawn sprinklers and cherry trees that push back with a stubborn, if not irresistible delight. Summer is less about writing than about attention. The post Elevating the Ordinary: Gravity vs. Karl Ove Knausgaard […]
  • The Little Clan of Literate Discourse
    While at times this reviewer of The Little Clan is himself desperate for "the casual entitlement of vertical parity" with worthwhile, enviable acquaintances and adversaries, for someone who might call out my "distinctive aesthetic" or conversations in which the participants bemoan their "desultory attempts" at topics less "pedestrian," the world drawn in The Little Clan […]
  • What passes for perverted is normal, and vice versa: a review of Jen Silverman’s The Island Dwellers collection
    There is such a thing as a credible joke — one based in astute observation, irony, paradox. Such humor lies at the opposite end of puns: it’s richly semantic. If credibility matters, do read this collection. You’ll be laughing, but the laughter is razor sharp. Even the titles in this short story collection by Jen […]
  • Sync with the Inefficiencies of Time
    Sync with the Inefficiencies of Time: DarkViolin reviews The After Party, a poetry collection by Jana Prikryl. The post Sync with the Inefficiencies of Time appeared first on Inside the Ordinary.