Hartigan to speak at Roundhouse Reading Series

Endi Bogue Hartigan will be reading for the Roundhouse Reading Series on Friday at Looking Glass Books. Looking Glass Books will resume their series after a summer hiatus.

LA GRANDE — Award-winning Portland poet Endi Bogue Hartigan will be reading for the Roundhouse Reading Series at 7 p.m. on Friday  at Looking Glass Books (1118 Adams Ave, La Grande, doors open at 6:30 p.m.).

Hartigan’s second book, “Pool [5 Choruses]” (Omnidawn, 2014), was selected by Cole Swenson for the 2012 Omnidawn Open Poetry Book Prize and was a finalist for the 2015 Oregon Book Award.

Her first book, “One Sun Storm” (Center for Literary Publishing, 2008), was chosen by Martha Ronk for the Colorado Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award.

Her poems and selections have been published in New American Writing,Chicago Review, Verse, VOLT, Pleiades, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, Antioch Review and other magazines and anthologies.

She has lived primarily on the west coast and Hawaii, and is a graduate of Reed College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow.

She has worked for many years in communications for public higher education, as well as other roles in teaching and education. She lives in Portland with her husband, poet Patrick Playter Hartigan, and their son, Jackson.

In selecting “Pool [5 Choruses]” for the Omnidawn prize, Cole Swenson said “Phrase after phrase jumps out, clear, but also surprising. Hartigan’s linguistic play is almost vertiginous, constantly on the brink of overbalancing — but she never does, instead landing electrifyingly spot-on every time, creating a gymnastics of the page that is simply exhilarating.”

“What appeals most about these poems is how much manages to happen in such a small sequence of moments, moving on to the next to the next, each one sending ripples that continue for miles,” according to Rob McLennan who writes for The Small Press Review.

“Where Hartigan shines is in the lyric disjunction, composing poems that work to explore the seriousness of real events and the weight of how the world sometimes happens to be, all while managing a lightness of line and a spark of phrasing that bounces.”

The Roundhouse Reading Series, sponsored by Blue Mountain Writers and made possible by a grant from Maxine Cook Public Library and private donations, is resuming after a summer break and shifting nights from the customary Third Wednesdays to Friday for October and for a Nov. 20 reading by Alex Kuo, Washington novelist, poet and teacher.

Hartigan’s books can be ordered in advance of the reading from Looking Glass Books. Copies will be available at the reading.

The author will be signing copies.

The evening will conclude with a Q & A and open mic. Those wishing to read are asked to sign-up before the reading. Admission is free. Jax Dog will cater the event.

Donations to the reading series are encouraged.

For more information, contact David Memmott, dsmemmott@frontier.com or Nancy Knowles, nknowles@eou.edu

Painting a grisly, horrific picture of war

In the long and terrible annals of warfare, the First World War is unique.

And uniquely awful.

More people died in the Second World War.

But more than half the victims in that conflict were civilians.

By contrast, the majority of those killed in the 1914-18 war — the Great War, as it was usually called until Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 — were military men.

About 10 million of them died, a figure that today, when applied to war or indeed to any other tragedy — whether natural or man made — sounds farcical.

I find it a grisly business to compare death tolls as though they were only figures jotted on a ledger. But it seems to me that numbers, in their cold reality, sometimes tell the tale more accurately, if brutally, than words.

For perspective, about 6,800 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, over a period of almost 14 years.

In a single day — July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme in France — the British Army lost 20,000 men.

Yet it’s not merely the length of the butcher’s bill that distinguishes the Great War.

It’s the futility.

Although the late American historian Leon Wolff, whose 1958 book “In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign,” describes in detail only one of the dozens of bloody battles during the war, probably would replace futility with a more accusatory word.

Stupidity.

Wolff’s thesis was hardly unique during that period between the Korean and Vietnam wars.

He was among several prominent historians who reached quite different conclusions than writers from the previous generation, some of whom had fought in the trenches.

In general terms these younger authors portray military leaders as stubborn and callous, as men who didn’t understand the changes that the machine gun and modern artillery had wrought on the battlefield, and who seemed not to care that their insistence on applying 19th century tactics to 20th century warfare guaranteed the horrendous death tolls, yet still were destined to fail.

Wolff, writing from that perspective, focuses on a specific period, place, army and leader — the British Army under Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig during the Third Battle of Ypres, fought in Belgium in the summer and autumn of 1917.

The battle, also known as Passchendaele for the name of a village that figures prominently in the story, is the Great War in a microcosm.

Haig and his generals repeatedly ordered hundreds of thousands of soldiers to stride toward the Germans’ strongest defenses on the Western Front, defenseless against bullets and shrapnel and high explosive shells fired in quantities not equalled before or since.

More than 150,000 men died.

But as Wolff writes, with a curious mixture of eloquence and palpable disgust, the even greater tragedy, if such is possible given the slaughter, is that these attacks served no discernible military purpose except to Haig’s sycophants.

The German line wavered but never broke.

“In Flanders Fields,” in common with many Great War histories, is a depressing book.

It is above all a story of waste, of profligacy with human life that can’t be justified and is sickening to consider.

Author to recount Willamette meteorite

ENTERPRISE — A meteorite discovered in the Willamette Valley in 1902 — and the ensuing story that recounts the impact of historical natural occurrences on individuals — is one of several essays in “Ancient Places,” a new book authored by Jack Nisbet.

“The Longest Journey,” a slide presentation based on the Willamette meteorite story will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday at Stage One, 119 E. Main St. in Enterprise. There is no charge.

“Communicating the bonds between the land and its people is a vital part of keeping Wallowa County intact,” said Julia Lakes, conservation director of Wallowa Land Trust, which is hosting the event. “We invited Jack Nisbet to give this presentation after hearing him at the Josephy Arts and Cultural Center earlier this year. His storytelling ability conveys the connections which offer a sense of place to people.”

“The Longest Journey” is a part of the ongoing Into the Wallowa Outings & Lectures Series taking place throughout the summer.

“Ancient Places is a collection of nonfiction stories about the interplay between people and landscape,” Nisbet said. “The Willamette meteorite, like many of the others, offers a window into all kinds of social and land issues as seen through the eyes of the people who took part in the story. Seeing how they made their decisions can help us gain perspective on the ones we must make today and in the future.”

Nisbet’s relationship with Northeastern Oregon began when he researched books on North West Co. fur agent David Thompson and plant collector David Douglas. Associates of both men described what they saw in the Grande Ronde Valley and Snake River country.

“Becoming familiar with the landscape of 200 years ago equips us to think about what the countryside will look like 200 years from now,” Nisbet said.

Writing soothes Summerville poet’s soul

LA GRANDE — Poetry is to Puerto Rico what corn is to Iowa.

As a young child, Summerville’s Amelia Diaz Ettinger began reciting poetry and grew to love the art form.

“It was something that was very present in most Puerto Rican families,” she said. “The extended families would get together for big lunches and dinners where poetry was recited. It was natural. Poetry was also prevalent on TV, featuring Carribbean poets.”

Now Ettinger has had a collection of her poems, “Speaking at a Time,” published by Red Bat Books. A book launch party will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at Looking Glass Books in              La Grande.

The recently retired La Grande High School biology, world science and Spanish teacher said the poems all originated from a time when she was missing Puerto Rico.

“There’s a thread of nostalgia woven through the poems,” she said.

“I miss the extended family,” Ettinger said. “Most of the poems in the book were written when my kids were little. I was thinking about the enrichness they were missing. The food. I could come close to preparing the dishes, but back then, in the ’80s, there was a limited amount of ingredients available here for an authentic Puerto Rican kitchen. I missed the beaches, the coral reefs, the parties that always included dancing and music.”

Ettinger gets lots of her inspiration from reading. A couple of Ettinger’s favorite poets when she was writing the book were Federico Garcia Lorca from Spain and Pablo Neruda from Chile.

Growing up, Ettinger was inspired by two poets who were very visible and recited their negroid onomatopoeic poems on TV — Palés Matos of Puerto Rico and Nicolas Guillén of Cuba.

Tastes, however, change.

“I now read a wide eclectic group of writers,” she said.

Poems, she said, are born in different ways.

“You take a framework and begin adding and subtracting until you get something that conveys what you want to say and something that might give people some fulfillment,” she said.

Ettinger said she believes writing a poem is a lot like cooking.

“People either love cooking or they don’t,” she said. “In poetry, I have a thought and then I see it on paper. When you finish, you think, ‘Wow, that’s kind of cool.’ You can taste it, feel it, be moved by it.”

The poet believes a key to good writing is to immerse yourself in a lot of good poetry.

“I like to play with words,” she said. “A lot of good poetry is playing with words. I like to take a poem in Spanish and sit down and translate it into English. Writing down poems on paper opens areas in your brain. You see how words are put together by a master, and it improves your own writing.”

Because of her career, along with raising a family, Ettinger took a long hiatus in writing. Now she is back full force, rediscovering work she did earlier, rewriting and polishing.

“I’m still writing poetry,” she said, “but it’s more eclectic now, not as thematic as the book.”

Ettinger is also writing a novel carrying the working title “False Memories.” It’s a loosely autobiographical tale about growing up on the islands.

Author Craig Johnson visits Baker City Tuesday

Courtesy photo
Best-selling author Craig Johnson is coming back to Baker City.

By Lisa Britton

Go! staff

Best-selling author Craig Johnson is coming back to Baker City for a discussion and signing of “Dry Bones,” the latest book in his acclaimed Walt Longmire series.

The author event will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, 2020 Auburn Ave. in Baker City.

Social time will start at 6:30 p.m.

Johnson is the author of eight novels in the Walt Longmire mystery series, which has garnered popular and critical acclaim.

The series is the basis for the hit A&E drama “Longmire,” starring Robert Taylor, Lou Diamond Phillips and Katee Sackoff.

Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyo., population 25.

“Dry Bones” synopsis:

When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is discovered in Absaroka County, Wyoming, it appears to be a windfall for the Big Horn Mountain Dinosaur Museum until Danny Lone Elk, the Cheyenne rancher on whose property it’s discovered, is found dead with no eyes, floating face down in a turtle pond.

With millions of dollars at stake, Danny’s family claims her, the tribe claims her and the federal government claims her. As Wyoming’s acting deputy attorney and a cadre of FBI officers descend on the town, turning what should be a local matter into a political charade, Sheriff Walt Longmire is determined to find out who would benefit from Danny’s death.

Meanwhile, Walt’s daughter Cady has come west for a visit with her newborn daughter, Lola. When personal tragedy strikes back east, it seems ghosts from the sheriff’s past won’t fade away as quietly as he’d hoped.

When Undersheriff Victoria Moretti leaves for Philadelphia with Cady and Lola, Walt enlists old friends Lucian Connolly and Omar Rhoades, along with Dog and best friend Henry Standing Bear to trawl the vast Lone Elk ranch looking for answers to Walt’s 65-million-year-old cold case.