Why to These Rocks

Why to These Rocks
Hardcover, 6 x 9, 304 pages.
ISBN: 9781597145305.

By Lisa Alvarez

“It is a pleasure to think that readers of this anthology will be replicating the experience of those summer mornings and evenings in the mountains. . . . Browsing an anthology, [readers] are pollen-gathering, as the poets were doing every day as they walked in the high mountain air, wondering or watching where their next poem was going to come from.”
—Robert Hass, from the foreword

The Community of Writers celebrates fifty years of poetry with this collection of more than one hundred and forty works composed at its annual summer poetry workshop in Olympic Valley, California. Edited by workshop codirector Lisa Alvarez and introduced by longtime poetry director Robert Hass, the book is divided into three sections: place, process, and process in the place.

Why to These Rocks speaks to the special community nurtured in the valley’s inimitable setting, one that has inspired poets worldwide—many of whom developed significant bodies of award-winning work in its creative and generative atmosphere.

Featuring poetry by:
Don Mee Choi
Lucille Clifton
Rita Dove
Cornelius Eady
Forrest Gander
Robert Hass
Juan Felipe Herrera
Cathy Park Hong
Galway Kinnell
Yusef Komunyakaa
Harryette Mullen
Sharon Olds
C.D. Wright
Al Young
Kevin Young
Matthew Zapruder
. . . and many more

 

Reviews

"These exhilarating poems are inspired by the beauty of the place and the freedom of being set loose in your own head. Also the freedom of being released from your own head, if out of your head is where you need to go.” San Diego Tribune
"The literary legacy of the Community of Writers spreads far and wide in contemporary American poetry. It makes change, meaningfully, in the lives and careers of writers.” —Evie Shockley
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About the Author

Lisa Alvarez

Lisa Alvarez

Lisa Alvarez is a professor of English at Irvine Valley College. Her poetry and prose has appeared in numerous literary journals. Alvarez coedited Writer’s Workshop in a Book: The Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction with Alan Cheuse and Orange County: A Literary Field Guide with Andrew Tonkovich. She codirects the annual Community of Writers summer conference in Olympic Valley, California, and lives in Modjeska Canyon.

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