James Galvin is a poet, and his vision of the people who inhabit the land where this story takes place is also poetic. Instead of a straightforward narrative from beginning to middle to end, it intermingles scenes from the lives of several characters told in flashbacks and flashforwards, all sequenced along the spine of a single plot line that involves the pursuit of a fugitive who has killed another man.

The location is northern Colorado and parts of Wyoming extending through the Great Divide Basin and northward into the mountains. The main characters are men with ties to the land -- a rancher, a cowboy, a doctor. Each is witness in his own way to the passing of the rural West and its replacement by land developers and the mining and logging industries.

They are also remnants of a code of honor that respects hard work, the individual, the land and its wildlife, and the values of courage, loyalty, and generosity. In particular, Galvin captures the nuances of friendship between these very individual men and the way matters of concern to them are often lightened with ironic and self-deprecating humor. I enjoyed this book and found myself caring very much for the welfare of its fugitive protagonist.

I recommend this novel to anyone with an interest in the modern West. As a companion book, I'd also recommend Frank Clifford's nonfiction book "Backbone of the World: A Portrait of a Vanishing Way of Life Along the Continental Divide," which finds many of the same kinds of people from real life and explores in greater depth many of the land use issues raised by Galvin's book. As of this writing, "Fencing the Sky" seems to be going out of print. I'm hoping that it reappears shortly in paperback and has a new life for new readers in that format.

A book I will read several times and. Very well written and a scathing take on the "back to nature" lemmings who want to spread all the woes of overpopulation into the very open spaces they yearn to experience. After reading this book I feel that I have a new author to enjoy and am pleased to see that he has written several.

This the area where I grew up, after reading one of the reviews felt the need to" speak my piece". Don't read this unless you read The Meadow first. This story isn't about land barons it's about the little guy we all know in the new west the ones who hang on to the dream. It has a wonderful crazy twist that we've seen in many of the true life small ranch owners. Enjoy it for the story with all the twists and turns of a Wyoming creek.

Wonderful poet...I buy and read everything he writes, including his fiction/prose. Significant center section of this book is Galvin's (character's? or is it unabashedly autobiographical?) artful, moving...but ultimately 'one note'...crie de ceur about the betrayal of 'his'/his wife, implied divorce, and loss of daughter living in the same household. (I'm betting that in the somewhat small world of American poets there is a connection here to Galvin's previous marriage to another poet.) I suspect that when there is a selected poems, some of these will be retained, others dropped. The stronger poems are effective from every perspective. I was glad to see that some of Galvin's earlier concerns about the larger natural world appear here in the collection as well.

A long time has past since John Keats slouched beneath a nightingale's nest in a plum tree to bemoan a world "Where but to think is to be full of sorrow/and leaden-eyed despairs/Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes/Or new love pine at them beyond to morrow." In our cool age, merely to think of any contemporary poet attempting to revisit themes endemic to lyric poetry since Sappho-desire, betrayal, trust, loss, loneliness and nature-awakens us to just how awesome a challenge it has become to say "my heart aches" without encountering a sea of guffaws.

But there is a nightingale in Montana, perched on a windowsill somewhere around James Galvin's ranch, and, as his sixth volume of poetry attests, he hears it loud and clear. Throughout "X," a collection of poems dwelling largely on his defunct marriage with fellow poet Jorie Graham, Galvin relies on the reader's own conscience and experience to finish each poem's meaning and affect, often transcending this basic rule of poetic law by digging deeper, excavating past losses and interrogating the difficult present, the struggle to go on. "After bad things happen we always live/A little more," Galvin observes in a language as simple as it is moving.

Routinely, Galvin steps out of the way of his poems to let them speak their way out of loss, stifling so much as a jaded chuckle in the textured silence following every final line. If the trick to conveying heartbreak convincingly in contemporary poetry is to simply tell what happened, rather than wrestling readers into feeling your pain, "X" provides ample instruction:

So out of love with life am I
No future will have me.
How can you lose a lie?
Well, you can. Easy.
All those years together, it seems,
Were posturings of goodbye.
For a time I raved.
Now I dwell in moods and reveries
Like frightened birds-

Galvin's bursts of thwarted longing are calculated with such tact and precise timing that they leap off of the page. By the time he gets around to saying, simply, "You are in love with/someone else" or "Why aren't you in love with me," the stage has already been so patiently set for a heaving sigh of empathy that only the dead could turn the page without at least a quiver in the chin. "Everyone drifts/in their disastrous bodies," Galvin writes in the book's first poem, "Little Dantesque." Just midway into this opening poem, the reader already has little reason to suspect that Galvin's lines are anything less than flakes chipped from a soul in smolder. "Love's not love until it's lost," he writes in a later poem. The body and its carriage of lusts has indeed proven disastrous, as the "threadbare" speaker continually "drifts" along an impasse of things that were: "I had a happy medium/Had her reading out of my palm/The circus folded up and left."

Inevitably, there are fleeting descents into mushiness and melodramatics, as when Galvin signs off the poem "Dear May Eight," "Yours, May Eighth /Sincerely/Man under influence of sky." Additionally, a couple of poems read less like verse and more like tongue-twisting transcripts from some spelling-bee:

Algorithmic,
Epigenetic,
He ciphers ciphers.

Generally, though, the poems in "X" demonstrate the talents of a master craftsmen, fraught with biting, alliterative moments of rhythm-"O wretched road in rain," "an inner din unending"- and heroic first lines that could eat through a cage, "This is the wave of gravel where she left me off the edge of my life" or "The whole night sky went bad in the knees." Further, from the villanelle "River Edged With Ice" to the end-rhymed "Dear Nobody's Business" or sprawling, long-lined masterpieces such as "Earthquake," "Leap Year" and "Depending on the Wind," Galvin's poetic range knows no end.

"Where Once I was not alone, now each/closed door is panic, and spaces grow immense with memory, like/shadows at dusk," Galvin writes in "Depending on the Wind," a spare, precise eulogy to the house he built with his hands for a family fated to leave him, "Gone that arrangement of allegiances called family/we never really know before it ends/Like love itself, it isn't true till/then." Seemingly dizzy with crestfallen lines such as these, Galvin deftly skirts the boundary between authenticity and mawkishness, and whether it's a nightingale crooning on a nearby windowsill or a case of the old heartbreak that's got him down, James Galvin's "X" yields some of the best poetry of his life.

Amazing, beautiful, heartfelt and lyrically stunning. This work may not only mark a personal best for the author, but for the decade as well. One to read and one to remember. To be honest, there is nothing to say but what is said, and so I'll be brief: don't miss it.

Galvin captures the feeling of third and fourth generation ranch people. Those looking for a narrative such as found in so many chronicles of the settling of the west may be dissapointed. I was raised with my brothers Frank, a character in the book, and Charlie about twenty five miles east of the "meadow" as the crow flies and also on the Colorado-Wyoming state line. Frank, a fountain of common sense, but not nearly as philosophical as Galvin, shared his passion for the meadow and its environs as do all who were brought under its spell some time during their lives. None of us could have put it into words and we are thankful James did. The style is difficult even for those who know the area and characters, but it is exactly appropriate for the task at hand.

I was absolutely stunned by the superb story telling and the poetic quality of the well-crafted prose in James Galvin's _The Meadow_. This is *literature.* So if you have literary tastes and an interest in the American west, there is absolutely no doubt that you will enjoy this wonderful book.

The realism of rural life in the mountains is combined with haunting personal stories that keep you reading. The author has a genuine empathy for nature and for the individual people who have the stamina to survive in a harsh environment. Highly recommended.

This book isn't about a Meadow. It is about the people who live in environments that demand absolute attention and respect. It is about people who have a love for the land upon which they live. More than anything, it is quite simply, about people.

This book is written with a nonlinear narrative that jumps from generation to generation. The people who lived on and around The Meadow are shown in a series of short anecdotes. Each piece building upon the last, or preparing for one that'll come a few pages into the future. The book is not traditional in its struture, but one could argue that life on such land, or anywhere for that matter, has little concern for what we humans consider the "right" and "natural" way of things. This book goes where the weather takes you, like the winds on top of that distant meadow.

That said, the writing is powerful and a delight. What this book challenges the reader with in terms of structure, it gives back tenfold in pure prose beauty. James Galvin knows how to put words together such that the sentences themselves and the way they are written offer insight to an otherwise distant place. He brings it all home to us in this book, and as a man who has lived the last ten years of his life in various cities on the East and West Coast, I appreciate the very generous reminder that there are simpler, and yet no less difficult, ways to live out there. Satisfaction comes from many points and from the simplest of things. The Meadow makes this very clear.

Great Work.

John Galvin guides the reader through Boston politics in the fifteen years preceding the Revolution, 1760-1775. Mr. Galvin focuses on the three men he contends were the most influential in the events in Boston in the pre-revolutionary years (Thomas Hutchinson, James Otis, and Samuel Adams).Very readable and a good source of behind-the-scenes activity that led to the beginning of the American Revolution.

Author John R. Galvin explores the personalities of three key figures whose actions and discourses constituted the roots of the American Revolution. Galvin's admirable scholarly discipline and his keen analysis deserve praise. His scope is very precise: it begins and ends with the period where Hutchinson, Adams, and Otis were interacting. Readers interested in Hutchinson, Adams, or Otis should read this book to gain a deeper insight into their personal philosophies and into the political struggles and challenges which made or defeated them, and which ultimately constituted the unyielding backdrop of their social existence and historical judgement. Readers interested in mid-18th century Massachussetts or American politics will learn much about the many groups and organizations of the period.

"Let us wash our hands of their blood." (Speaking of priests and nuns) Spoken by Martin Luther. Glad I don't follow him. His teachings are fundamentally wrong and mainly from trying to ease his soul and fears.

While not the most complex and challenging of devotional materials and while it uses a Scripture translation not among my favorites, the book combines the vitality of the Reformer and the ability of the translator to provide a series of brief yet compelling devotional reflections. This Luther speaks kindly and directly to heart and soul.

Luther understands human nature and man's condition. He knows how Christians are and how they live...imperfectly! But, it is faith alone that justifies you in the eyes of God. Don't worry my brothers and sisters in Christ, God loves you in spite of your sins. He knows when you're hurt and He knows that you may be confused; but have faith in God, even when you don't understand it. Place all your anxieties on Him, and live your life at Peace. This book helps make Scripture come alive, and it's a great into to Martin Luther's thoughts. Here's a sample (based on Luke 18:13):

"Some say, "I would feel better about God hearing my prayer if I were more worthy and lived a better life." I simply answer: If you don't want to pray before you feel that you are worthy or qualified, then you will never pray again. Prayer must not be based on or depend on your personal worthiness or the quality of the prayer itself but on the unchanging truth of God's promise. If the prayer is based on itself, or on anything else besides God's promise, then it's a false prayer that deceives you - even if your heart was breaking with intense devotion, and you were weeping drops of blood. We pray because we are unworthy to pray. Our prayers are heard precisely because we believe that we are unworthy. We become worthy to pray when we risk everything on God's faithfulness alone."

This study booklet is a nice guide for a parent or Sunday School teacher wanting to teach children values from the Bible. It quotes the New Century Version which is written at a fourth grade level but which retains surprising accuracy. There are discussions and activities and closing prayers. Parents and Sunday School teachers who love Proverbs will also enjoy THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE BOOK OF PROVERBS by Cody Jones. The comments are interesting and very readable and put things into a historical setting. It includes many historical drawings and photos to give you a sense of the culture of the time. There are 6 translations of Proverbs in parallel and a topical guide. Many of the mysteries and riddles of Proverbs are explored with surprising new answers.

This book is one of a series which I bought for consideration for a parents' group. I found them a bit conservative and not quite suitable for this particular audience. I got much more out of Parenting for Peace and Justice.

I and my nine year old daughter found this book to be very helpful in answering everyday questions that the traditional bible doesn't answer for children. The format is easy to read for children and the cartoons are a fun way to help them (and me!) to relate and remember the question and answer. Definately a winner for those who are seeking and want answers and for those who did not expect such unique questions from their children! A wonderful learning experience for parent and child.