Soul External - Rediscovering The Great Blue Heron - Hardcover

Steven H. Semken; Andrew R. Driscoll

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1888160624 ISBN 13: 9781888160628

Publisher: Ice Cube Press, LLC, 2015

Synopsis

There is a very real, center-of-the-world spot lurking in an unknown valley of northeastern Kansas, where chalky old growth trunks of sycamore trees and a slow moving stream exist alongside the nests, the souls, and the lives of great blue herons. This is a book of both fact and fiction, of myth, sense-ofplace, spirit, and magic. Reader s will embark on a literary and visual journey unlike any other; will (re)discover a wild and captivating realm full of lore, hearsay, myth, and spirit. The late, environmental book reviewer with Orion magazine, Peter Sauer, commented on this book s earliest version in a beautiful and in sightful way: I ve been becoming more and more impatient wondering where nature writing might go next, this book has helped me think about this with what feels like greater clarity. Mythological natural history is at least as useful and perhaps a lot more useful than scientifically derived natural history for writing about another species. Soul External is a combined effort of author and artist seeking to express their mutual sense of the significance and sacred in the natural world. Through a narrative centered upon the great blue heron scripted words play with graphic arrangements punctuated by drawings. All culminate in producing a fuller meditation having semiotic and aesthetic significance regarding this perfect circle of life.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew R. Driscoll received a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Among other occupations, he has taught art and art history at the collegiate level for over twelve years. Andrew is a practicing painter and draftsman having an invested kinship with the 18th and 19th century Romantic Movement s creative processes as reflected through nature. His paintings, prints, and drawings exist in national and international collections.
Steve Semken remains fascinated by the habits of great blue herons. He is an award-winning author of several books including Moving With The Elements and The Tin Prayer. He has been the Writer-in-Residence at the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, as well as speaker, and teacher, at workshops on writing and publishing all over the United States. In 1993 he founded the Ice Cube Press, which is dedicated to relentlessly promoting a better understanding of the merits inherently found within the Midwest through the literary arts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ice Cube Press, LLC
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1888160624
• ISBN 13: 9781888160628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Andrew R. Driscoll
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144