Set the Ploughshare Deep: A Prairie Memoir

Rating:
Summary: The only "truly exotic" place to live
Review: When I was young, my father farmed for a time. I had almost forgotten how it feels for one's livelyhood to be so closely tethered to the weather and economy, so much that one storm (or lack of) can throw one's life into chaos. Say it doesn't rain for a month, starting today, so you're not going to get a third of your regular salary. That's farming; very arbitrary. Set the Ploughshare Deep reminded me of how this feels.

Murphy's writing is simple, spare and excellent. He has a wry sense of humor that injects itself into his stories and poems occasionally, and an amiable voice. He also inspires incredible emotion, especially when he writes of the lives, manners and deaths of his beloved hunting dogs. An elegy for one of his dogs, Dee, broke my heart. An account of another dog's reaction to her puppy's death is equally moving. Murphy is excellent at what he does.

Rating:
Summary: Prose memoir nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
Review: When is a prose memoir nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry? When it is written by the talented Mr. Murphy and punctuated with poems that arise out of the narrative like crops from the earth, concentrating it into a sweet or bitter nourishment. The memoir tells how Murphy's family came to farm in the Red River Valley bordering Minnesota and North Dakota, starting with his grandfather from New York, who broke the virgin bluestem with a two-bottom plough. Full of both personal memories and the sweep of history, the narrative depicts a way of life at the mercy of drought and flood and constrained by national politics and now global economics. In this environment, strength of character is not a virtue but a given. With vivid portraits of his grandparents, parents, and neighbors, Murphy humanizes an often unforgiving landscape. It is amazing to come upon his poems-each one distilling the literal truth with acute accuracy. Anyone interested in the distinct power of poetry will want to see how prose and poetry interact. Six color woodcuts by artist Charles Beck make this book glow.