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Rating: 
Summary: Yet more praise!
Review: "If one must travel, one should do it with the eyes of a child, the mind of an ecologist, the heart of a pagan, and the words of a poet. Astonishingly, Emily Hiestand has all of that." --Kirkpatrick Sale, author,The Conquest of Paradise "The prose quivers with grace and wit as it charges the large questions with luminous details." --Bonnie Costello, author, Marianne Moore:Imaginary Possessions "In these fresh accounts of far-flung locations, Hiestand keeps returning us to the profound questions not of exploration, but of home. That is the book's great discovery: we're in this together, wherever we are." --Patricia Hampl, author,A Romantic Education "The most exciting travel writing I have read in years.... These pieces are, in the best sense, world-views... The poetic eye is their greatest strength; or rather, a poetic sensibility and intuitive perceptiveness combined with a remarkably cultivated and civilized intellect... The style seems to be an expression of good manners, good intellectual manners. She confronts head on some of the basic issues of writing and thinking about nature." --Robert Finch, ed.,The Norton Book of Nature Writing "Her range of references is wide and unexpected, and she is a wonderful observer... [W]hat holds the book together is a wry and elegant dexterity of intelligence, a sense of humor that engages both the solemn revelations and the undignified exasperations of travel with precision and elan." --Franklin Burroughs, author, Billy Watson's Croker Sack
Rating:
Summary: Reviewers praise this book!
Review: "Hiestand journeys in this altogether terrific book to the far reaches of the human heart as well as to places for which there are maps. Her language is special. It is also, in the best sense of the word, 'poetic': precise, intense, compacted, and full of surprises." --Geoffrey Stokes, The Boston Globe "Categorizing The Very Rich Hours as a travel book seems at first an underestimation of its scope, but this tour de force of personal narrative is indeed an odyssey of sorts, a rich and rewarding literary journey told with the voice of a poet and the heart of a consummate observor...Hiestand has crafted a complex, yet elegant, naturalist approach to travel...This is a rare book, one that is astonishing fluid and keenly observant." --Fiona Luis, The Boson Globe "Here is a dazzlingly different kind of travel book. And it's just in time too, for a genre that was in danger of running to ground in the old ruts.... Deftly, Hiestand moves from specific physical observations to her big philosophical question: 'What is right habitation?' As she travels, she looks closely at our world and thinks hard about why and how we are to live in it. It is a rare experience." --Luree Miller, The Washington Post "Hiestand won the 1990 Whiting Writers Award and received a National Poetry Series award. Her book is more than a collection of travel essays...She brings a keen intellect and intuitive insight into human nature, and her prose is both evocative and lyrical...With its natural synthesis of poetry and prose with nature and culture, this volume provides a literary treat for the mind." --Jane Gilliland, Library Journal
Rating:
Summary: Yet more praise!
Review: "If one must travel, one should do it with the eyes of a child, the mind of an ecologist, the heart of a pagan, and the words of a poet. Astonishingly, Emily Hiestand has all of that." --Kirkpatrick Sale, author,The Conquest of Paradise "The prose quivers with grace and wit as it charges the large questions with luminous details." --Bonnie Costello, author, Marianne Moore:Imaginary Possessions "In these fresh accounts of far-flung locations, Hiestand keeps returning us to the profound questions not of exploration, but of home. That is the book's great discovery: we're in this together, wherever we are." --Patricia Hampl, author,A Romantic Education "The most exciting travel writing I have read in years.... These pieces are, in the best sense, world-views... The poetic eye is their greatest strength; or rather, a poetic sensibility and intuitive perceptiveness combined with a remarkably cultivated and civilized intellect... The style seems to be an expression of good manners, good intellectual manners. She confronts head on some of the basic issues of writing and thinking about nature." --Robert Finch, ed.,The Norton Book of Nature Writing "Her range of references is wide and unexpected, and she is a wonderful observer... [W]hat holds the book together is a wry and elegant dexterity of intelligence, a sense of humor that engages both the solemn revelations and the undignified exasperations of travel with precision and elan." --Franklin Burroughs, author, Billy Watson's Croker Sack
Rating: 
Summary: Description and Praise
Review: Poet, writer, artist and naturalist Emily Hiestand takes us to four far-flung corners of the globe and gives us some of the most sensual, learned, and witty writing about place to appear in years. Unlike male travel writers who tend to chronicle solitary adventures in exotic lands, Hiestand approaches travel as a companionable activity, often a journey toward those we love. Her writing on the natural world reflects a keenly poetic eye; hers is a rare ability to make the ancient, human history of the land come alive. REVIEWS The Washington Post, October 25, 1992 Here is a dazzlingly different kind of travel book. And it's just in time too, for a genre that was in danger of running to ground in the old ruts. Deftly, Hiestand moves from specific physical observations to her big philosophical question: 'What is right habitation?' As she travels, she looks closely at our world and thinks hard about why and how we are to live in it. It is a rare experience. --Luree Miller The Boston Globe, September 20, 1992 Hiestand journeys in this altogether terrific book to the far reaches of the human heart as well as to places for which there are maps. Her language is special. It is also, in the best sense of the word, "poetic": precise, intense, compacted, and full of surprises. --Geoffrey Stokes Publishers Weekly, August 31, 1992 The exquisite prose and erudition displayed in these essays by National poetry Series Award-winning poet Hiestand (Green the Witch Hazel Wood) may awe some readers as she brilliantly portrays four very different, far- flung localities. Their geology, history, and people are animated by an artist's vision, a naturalist's curiosity and an intellectual disposition....The reader will long remember Hiestand's chilling and masterful account of her meeting with a "primal" Everlades alligator. Library Journal, September 15, 1992 More than a collection of travel essays...With its natural synthesis of poetry and prose with nature and culture, ! this volume provides a literary treat for the mind. --Jane Gilliland Inquirer, Philadelphia. PA, September, 1993 Travel writing is a demanding genre. At its best, it is an exquisite mix of the personal, the philosophical and the factual--artfully propelled by vivid description. That's not an easy balance to achieve. But Emily Hiestand gets it just right in The Very Rich Hours. --Eils Lotozo The Boston Globe, October 15, 1992 Categorizing The Very Rich Hours as a travel book seems at first an underestimation of its scope, but this tour de force of personal narrative is indeed an odyssey of sorts, a rich and rewarding literary journey told with the voice of a poet and the heart of a consummate observor...Hiestand has crafted a complex, yet elegant, naturalist approach to travel...This is a rare book, one that is astonishing fluid and keenly observant. --Fiona Luis Miami Herald, September 27, 1992 Hiestand is an award-winning poet, and her description of the spiders with which she and Peter Dunn share a houseboat is spun, like a web, from gossamer; her recounting of the couple's confrontation with a Glades alligator...sends shivers scampering up the spine. --Margaria Fichtner The Atlantic Monthly, December 1992 Hiestand is a truly good traveler--she enjoys the unexpected. The most exciting travel writing I have read in years... These pieces are, in the best sense, world views." --Robert Finch, co-editor, The Norton Book of Nature Writing If one must travel, one should do it with the eyes of a child, the mind of an ecologist, the heart of a pagan, and the words of a poet. Astonishingly, Emily Hiestand has all of that. --Kirkpatrick Sale, author, The Conquest of Paradise In the fresh accounts of far-flung locations, Hiestand keeps returning us to the profound questions not of exploration, but of home. That is the book's great discovery: we're in this together, wherever we are. --Patricia Hampl, author, A Romantic Education Emily Hiestand encounters flora and fau! na, myths and language, history and ecology as participants in an ancient, discontinuous colloquy. As she eavesdrops, she must reconstruct by conjecture, wit, and erudition, the contexts and isues. Her range of references is wide and unexpected, and she is a wonderful observer. But what holds the book together is a wry and elegant dexterity of intelligence, a sense of humor that engages both the solemn revelations and the undignified exasperations of travel with precision and elan. --Franklin Burroughs, author, Billy Watson's Croker Sack AUTHORBIO: Emily Hiestand is a poet, essayist, and visual artist. Her books are Green the Witch Hazel Wood (Graywolf Press, 1989), which received the National Poetry Series Award; The Very Rich Hours (Beacon Press), named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the five best books of travel literature of 1992; and Angela The Upside Down Girl, And Other Domestic Travels (Beacon Press, 1998). Hiestand's literary awards include The Nation /Discovery, The National Poetry Series Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award. Her writing appears in The Nation, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, Southwest Review, Orion Magazine, Best American Poetry, Hudson Review, Partisan Review, and The New York Times, among other publications. She was a founding director of Communicators for Nuclear Disarmament, and is currently literary and poetry editor for Orion magazine, and a director of Say That! Productions, which creates spoken word and musical recordings.
Rating:
Summary: Praise by a reader familiar with Hiestand's work
Review: The Very Rich Hours does not merely tell; it transports. And if this is not enough, it also entertains. Hiestand has an eye for the humor innate in most situations involving human beings, a sense communicated delicately and wryly rather than broadly. The tableau which features Hiestand and her travelling companion learning how to navigate a houseboat in the Everglades is as funny as choice parts of Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See. Like Adams, Hiestand does not allow her own discomfiture to eclipse the enjoyment her audience might obtain from her experience. Hiestand also knows that the real adventure in travelling lies in discoveries like the Stromness Natural History Museum, with its "hundred frozen-in-flight, frozen-on-a-branch, or frozen-in-defense-of-their-young stuffed birds," or the sudden appearance of an herbalist shop, populated by "crones," on a busy Athens street. She finds many marvelous surprises, and she invests the time and att! ention required to appreciate and understand them. The Very Rich Hours deserves the same attention.
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Summary: The Very Rich Hours has very rich prose, full of grace.
Review: Traveling through the eyes and heart of Hiestand is engaging and thoroughly fulfilling. As Bonnie Costello said, "The prose quivers with grace and wit as it charges the large questions with luminous details." Or, as Robert Finch said, "The most exciting travel writing I've read in years."
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Summary: Adventures of the mind and heart
Review: What fun, what vision, what a great shipwreck story. I've read plenty of sea adventures, but never one that merged grit, adrenaline, and fear with a lyrical excursion worthy of Calvino or Marquez. And that's one part of one essay. Like a travelogue shot by a feature filmmaker, this beautifully wrought book offers sharp, compelling storytelling images set in luminous portraits of the natural world.
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