Home Ground || How we describe our American lands
Written: Nov 07 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Broad scope, easy-to-read, descriptive.
Cons: It is less a dictionary, more a cultural sharing. Can be 'technical' at times.
The Bottom Line: The words we use to describe/define our 'home ground' draw out memories of where we come from and allow us to convey images of where we now are to others.
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| sleeper54's Full Review: Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney - Home Ground: Lang... |
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'Home ground' can be defined as "one's familiar surroundings or habitat". The North American continent contains innumerable varieties of habitats, landforms, micro-environments, and physical features. While some create and foster welcoming 'home grounds', others are as harsh and inhospitable as Dante's circles of Hell.
Just a page or two short of four hundred, sparsely illustrated with pencil/ink line drawings (that evoke more than a snapshot might hope to) and sharing literature excerpts illustrating many of the words and ideas; Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape compiles the words and ideas that shape our descriptions of the 'home ground' all around us.
Borrowing words, ideas, and literary allusions from each culture, language, and people that has touched American soil, American English has accumulated a rich, varied, melodic, and poetic collection of words and phrases that vividly describe and differentiate many features of the American landscape.
From 'a'a, the rubble-like lava found in Hawaii, to zigzag rocks, abandoned river dams built by Native Americans to capture fish, over eight hundred geological, natural, and animal- or human-made structures and features are described. They may be as small as a boil in a stretch of river whitewater or as expansive as the thousands of square miles comprising the high plains of the American West.
The words included in this source were chosen as much for what they tell us about ourselves as much as for what they tell us about our American landscape. Purely technical and well defined terms are included, as are colloquial words and phrases that capture the essence of a particular 'home ground' feature.
Noted nature writer Barry Lopez shepherds the efforts of forty five fellow writers in sharing representative words and phrases that describe both the ephemeral and the nearly eternal features of the American landscape.
As might be expected, with so many voices, the content and tone of the entries vary widely. A Bibliography Note at the end outlines how the editors tried to keep the writers harnessed together to meet a common goal. Notable works of "American literature in which landscape plays an important role", "specialized indexes", and source textbooks were suggested for authors to use as a common starting point.
A section titled The Writers features a mini-biography of each writer and introduces us to their unique backgrounds, talents, and perspectives. The vast majority of the contributors are writers, researchers, educators, people in touch with their personal 'home ground'. Some of the entries are 'textbook'-like. Others seem almost ...'agenda'-driven ...as if the author is quietly ( or not so quietly ) protesting a particular insult to Mother Nature. While still others are lyrical, painting word pictures of emotions and visceral reactions to the landscape form.
The Bottom Line
The land that we call home returns that favor by calling us back. The words that we use to describe and define our particular 'home ground' draw out our memories of where we come from and allow us to convey those images of where we are to others.
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape is not a dictionary and not a reference book. It is instead a cultural touchstone for where we have been and what our future as a people and as a land might be.
Reference site:
www.homegroundproject.com
Contains sample pages from the book, the introductory essay found in the book, a list of contributing writers, and other related content. A valuable resource for anyone interested in learning more about Home Ground: ...
Certified 'lean-n-mean' review.
Other 'reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic reviews' by sleeper54
Recommended:
Yes
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