92Y Audio: John McPhee's Rising from the Plains

http://www.92Y.org/Poetry

This recording is an excerpt from a 1989 appearance at 92Y, when John McPhee read from Rising from the Plains—the third volume of his geological tetralogy, Annals of the Former World. In the narrative table of contents to that book, which was some twenty years in the making, he wrote that: Rising from the Plains is primarily about Wyoming, which includes within its borders an exceptional range of geology. It's about the roadcuts of the interstate but also about Jackson Hole and the Tetons and the Powder River Basin and the Wind River Basin and the Laramie Range and David Love and his father and especially his mother, who educated her children at Love Ranch, a very long ride from neighbors, in the geographical center of Wyoming. She was born in 1882 and died long before I would have had a chance to meet her, but she is probably the most arresting personality I have encountered in the course of my professional work.


McPhee refers to his guide David Love as "the Grand Old Man of Rocky Mountain geology." Love's mother—this "most arresting personality"—is Ethel Waxham, and after McPhee had spent some time in Love's company, he let him read Waxham's journal, which tells the story of: A slim young woman who is not in any sense a geologist [stepping] down from a train in Rawlins, Wyoming, in order to go north by stagecoach into country that was still very much the Old West. She arrived in the autumn of 1905, when she was twenty-three. Her hair was so blond it looked white. In Massachusetts, a few months before, she had graduated from Wellesley College. . . . In addition to her skills in Latin and Greek, she could handle a horse expertly, but never had she made a journey into a region as remote as the one that lay before her.

Writing Rising from the Plains, McPhee remarked before his 1989 reading at the Poetry Center, "I got into a dialogue with [Miss Ethel Waxham]—writer to writer, author and subject—speaking back and forth across most of a century. I couldn't resist this duet. There was so much wit and elegance in the way she put things." During the reading, as you'll hear in the recording, he attempted to replicate this duet, asking his wife Yolanda to read the diary entries that are woven into his narrative.

In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, we've begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to other recordings: http://www.92y.org/content/virtual_poetry_center.asp?ev_ads=youtube_poetryarc...

Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

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