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 | | Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris ISBN-10: 9780618127245 ISBN-10: 0-618-12724-0 ISBN-13: 9780618127245 ISBN-13: 978-0-618-12724-5 Paperback 2001-04-06 Mariner Books Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description "A book of stories, a book of prayer, a book to be read meditatively and well," DAKOTA offers a timeless tribute to a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh and forgiving, steeped in history and myth. From the award-winning author of AMAZING GRACE, DAKOTA is Kathleen Norris at her most thoughtful, her most discerning, her best. She gives us, once again, a rare "gift of hope and balance, a place to begin" (Chicago Tribune) and assurance that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography. | ||
Amazon.com Review After 20 years of living in the "Great American Outback," as Newsweek magazine once designated the Dakotas, poet Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) came to understand the fascinating ways that people become metaphors for the land they inhabit. When trying to understand the polarizing contradictions that exist in the Dakotas between "hospitality and insularity, change and inertia, stability and instability.... between hope and despair, between open hearts and closed minds," Norris draws a map. "We are at the point of transition between east and west in the United States," she explains, "geographically and psychically isolated from either coast, and unlike either the Midwest or the desert west." Like Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge), Norris understands how the boundary between inner and outer scenery begins to blur when one is fully present in the landscape of their lives. As a result, she offers the geography lesson we all longed for in school. This is a poetic, noble, and often funny (see her discussion on the foreign concept of tofu) tribute to Dakota, including its Native Americans, Benedictine monks, ministers and churchgoers, wind-weathered farmers, and all its plain folks who live such complicated and simple lives. --Gail Hudson | ||
Reviews | ||
The beginning of my own spiritual geography This is one of my heart books. It is prose that reads like poetry. It is Norris at her best; I've yet to read anything of hers that surpasses Dakota. I read this at a time when I was living in New Mexico and hiking the mountains and canyons there with my spiritual friend. I grew up on a farm in a family of beekeepers, so I was no stranger to the world of nature. But reading Dakota helped me come into my own spiritually. For the first time I felt the spirit in the land and came to understand my own spiritual geography as I read other spiritual greats like Julian of Norwich and the Cloud of Unknowing. The mountains and canyons became the terrain of the spirit. Norris' descriptions of the Dakota landscape made me want to be there, to witness the spirit in the land, the spirit of the land. And by loving her spiritual geography, I came to love my own. From that moment on, the land has been more sacred, more reverential, more Eucharistic. I will always return to this book. | ||
Eloquent Whoever thought the little town of Lemmon, South Dakota could be an addition to that 'places you must visit some day' list? Sparsely populated,remote with miles of nothingness, adverse to modern technology and with constant severe weather, you would think, before your read "Dakota - A Spiritual Geography" by Kathleen Norris you might just want to skip that one spot on your travels. But after reading this eloquently written, detailed account of life on the plains, I longed to go there. Norris gave the land a power to behold, peopled with a mix of families that love the land going back generations, native Americans and monks. A tight knit community, who keep to themselves, and although of different beliefs and lifestyles, they somehow all fit together with one common denominator - the land. Kathleen Norris returned to her native Dakota, home of her grandparents after a long absence and living life as a bona-fide city girl. After 20 years back,working in both North and South Dakota,and although very much accepted and a pillar of the community, she still seems to be an outsider. She writes of the adjustments to her new life on this stark and harsh land, but more so of the love and appreciation of a place out of the time with the rest of the world. Woven together are the very different ways the various cultures and religious beliefs of the inhabitants make this land work for them. Norris' own religious background,including the many years faith played little or no part ofher life, is an integral part of the story as well.The beauty of the land had awakened in her a new spirit. The visions that she gives of land stretching forever, the power of the wind and weather puts the reader right there and you can almost smell and taste the sights, sounds and flavors of Dakota country.So simple a place, yet so complex in it's being,she compares this dry landscape to an ocean. It's a memoir, but more then that it's an experience that we become part of. One you may not want to come back from too soon. Highly recommended for those who like to be swept away to another place for just a little while. Thanks Ms. Norris for a wonderful read. enjoy....Laurie hardcover:Dakota a Spiritual Geography | ||
3.8 stars: More good than bad The book likens the experience of living in the western Dakotas to that of monasticism. Some poetry in prose as she enthuses over the landscape, and her occasional visits to a nearby Benedictine monastery. (Norris is a Presbyterian.) The book is marred by some digressions on economics that may have seemed necessary to the author, but which did not magnetize this reader; also, there are some remarks about her fellow townspeople (their provincialism, their being "set in their ways") that seem to flirt with "Snobama"-type elitism. There is the incredible claim on p. 210 that the Benedictine order predates "the Catholic hierarchy" -- to employ the popular code, whiskey tango foxtrot? But Norris's genuine affection for the monks, for the landscape, and (yes) for most of her neighbors, does come through and make us almost forget the flaws. | ||
More spirituality than Dakotas I had been meaning to read this book for years. After finally doing so, and then skimming through the 40+ previous Amazon reviews, it is clear that the book will appeal most to those of a highly spiritual bent (but probably not devout followers of an organized religious denomination or practice). I am not highly spiritual, so the book does not speak as intensely to me as no doubt it does to many. Nonetheless, I admire the author's sincerity and her individuality. As for the "Dakota" angle, that too is present, although not to the degree perhaps suggested by the title. Don't expect some sort of travelogue or overview of the Dakotas. In point of fact, much of the content is rather prosaic, which of course is not really a criticism of what is essentially an inward, spiritual book. Actually, the "geographical" locus of the book has more to do, I think, with the High Plains and with small towns than it does with the Dakotas. The book consists of thirty or so short stand-alone chapters, interspersed with what the author terms "weather reports". Thus, it is somewhat of a hodgepodge; it certainly is not an example or product of linear thought (which also denotes it as spiritual in nature). I ended up marking a few sentences or paragraphs for future reference. In that sense, I found the book to be somewhat like a magpie's collection -- a few sparkling gem-like pieces of glass amidst a lot of string, weeds, and twigs. | ||
A Truly Spiritual Geography The key to this book is right there in the title. The Dakota of Kathleen Norris' experience, depiction, and understanding is a decidedly spiritual state of being. Just as "deep calls unto deep," so the austere, high plains landscape both evokes and instructs Norris' interior world. Having traveled with Norris through her "Cloister Walk," and having learned her lexicon in "Amazing Grace," I was prepared to look around Dakota with her penetrating vision, to listen to the wind with her attentive hearing, to think deeply about what we were seeing together, and to let my heart grow still as she taught me. Now, though I've never yet been to the high plains, I have truly been to Kathleen Norris' unique and personal Dakota -- and is that not the best accolade for a travelogue, that the reader honestly feels that he's made the trip? I gave this book to a deep-souled friend who needed the time of quiet contemplation it provides, and I recommend it to you as well. | ||