West of the American dream
Subtitle: an encounter with Texas
By: Paul Christensen.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Tarleton State University southwestern studies in the humanities ;; no. 14
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: College Station
Language: eng
Number of pages: 340
Subjects: Christensen, Paul, 1943- -- Homes and haunts -- Texas.; Sánchez, Ricardo, 1941-; Gordone, Charles.; Miller, Vassar.; American poetry -- Texas -- History and criticism.; American poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Poets, American -- 20th century -- Biography.; English teachers -- Texas -- Biography.; Texas -- Intellectual life.; Texas -- In literature.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Like many a pioneer exiting the eastern forests, Paul Christensen felt the strangeness of an alien landscape when he first arrived in Texas in 1974. Schooled in the cool colors of life and poetry in the urban East, he approached his new career in the Southwest with missionary zeal and purpose: to discover the land and the kind of people and poetry it produced.".

"West of the American Dream is a multifaceted account of the search. Christensen shares his feelings of culture shock in east-central Texas as he meets the cowboy version of the blue-collar Texan and his Mexican American neighbours. He introduces readers to the convoluted history of poetry in Texas, a tradition, started by women, that shifted from a focus on the land to the quotidian habits of urban living.

Using a unique dissection of the public ritual of a poetry reading, Christensen assesses the origins of modern poetry, the value of imagination in modernist and postmodernist verse, and what Texas poets achieved and how their work evolved after World War II."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-325) and index.