Bearlodge Writers

Featured Book

 

 

 

 

 

Voices From The Underground

by James Bowers

PROLOGUE

I am sitting in my chair in the cabin built by my own hands, looking out at the stream flowing through my property, with my feet elevated, piles of newspapers and my dog at my side. It is not that I am lazy. I’m retired, and retirement means not doing whatever I do not care to do, not talking with people I do not find interesting, not being anything other than what I want to be. It is the ultimate in freedom, just to be myself: no more games to play, no role to tell me how I ought to act, only silence and intuition. But that also involves getting to know who I really am. Memories from the past float to the surface, long-forgotten, painful, surprising. I am changing in unexpected ways: death and rebirth in my late sixties, as if one can start over again at that age. I am becoming more reclusive, more observant, delighted by the vast panorama of inward experience.

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I Quote

"Pass the chocolate."

Members of Bearlodge

Bearlodge Writers is open to those who are looking for a serious literary critique group to attend on a regular basis. We welcome all types of writing and writers at all levels. Our literary group welcomes all without regard to age, sex, religion, race, color, politics, brand of false teeth, and occupations other than writer.

“We consider it our responsibility, and our privilege, to shed light upon one another’s work. But we try to do it in a way that not only illuminates, but gives warmth as well. Only the hardiest plant can withstand the sun’s fiercest rays. Seedlings, and the tender, easily bruised wings of writers just learning to fly, need a gentle, nurturing light.” Page Lambert, member

In The Shadow Of The Bearlodge

“This is a bold idea that a community can write a book. In the Shadow of the Bear Lodge can only be described as polyphony-individual melodies and themes contributing to a greater, more unified whole, which is the voice of the Bear Lodge itself.” Kent Meyers

"…readings from In the Shadow of the Bear Lodge will help transport the reader to a still, renewing and deeply personal inner space."  Midwest Book Review

"In the Shadow of the Bear Lodge  is a fine example of how accomplished poetry, fiction and nonfiction are being written in many parts of our state and also illustrates the success of the informal regional workshop groups in encouraging their members as the develop and share their abilities and professionalism.  Given the distance between communities and isolation occurring  during winters and bad weather, these writing groups are an important resource in the state's literary life....."  Robert Roripaugh Wyoming Poet Laureate 1995-2002

In the Shadow of the Bear Lodge: Writings from the Black Hills. An Anthology by Bearlodge Writers. www.bearlodgewriters.com  Rapid City, SD. Many Kites Press, 2006. ISBN 0-9729002-8-7. 200 pp. $15 plus shipping and handling.

Now Bearlodge Writers has published its first anthology. Inside the stunning cover illustration of buffalo painted by renowned watercolorist Sara Rogers is a rich and full-bodied collection of writing.

Contained in this volume are reincarnations of historical personages as well as entities who inhabit other worlds. Characters in this prose may bid sad farewells to grandmothers or puzzled hellos to oriental mystics. They find stories in their socks as well as in The Satisfy Café. Stained glass windows and river rapids sing to them, and they find Rome's Coliseum in a tipi ring, hear history in "the remembering wind."

Experienced, these writers gnaw every bit of flavor from the most gristly details of their lives, and can still laugh and solve the problems of the world while rolling hay into long, tight windrows. "Hang on, hang on," they say in a dozen ways, because "lonely is a state of mind." Each page offers a new treasure, a unique viewpoint, a glimpse of what we might say about lives that might look ordinary to others. With "a firm hand and a no-nonsense look," they give us reasons to go on, to "sing on the waters" as we float through our lives.

These writers are, in fact, you and me, all of us: ranchers and artists,
teachers, lawyers, professors of English, musicians and librarians, nurses and extension educators, a UPS driver, college students, corporate and private business persons- and they all encourage and support each other in their efforts to understand and capture what is most important in their lives. These ordinary men and women, in creating this writing collection, demonstrate in one more way their awareness of the exquisite fragility of this world. They understand deeply that they live and work "in the shadow of the Bearlodge."

Linda M. Hasselstrom, author
Between Grass and Sky