Book
Description
With the publication
of “Food
of Gods and Starvelings: The Selected Poems of Grace Stone
Coates”, Drumlummon Institute of Helena, Montana,
brings back into print the poetic works of a leading 20th-century
writer of the American West. Edited by Lee Rostad and Rick
Newby, the substantial collection showcases more than 200
of Coates’ “irresistible, poignant and authentic” poems.
During
her lifetime, Grace Stone Coates (1881-1976) published
two critically acclaimed collections of poems, “Mead
and Mangel-Wurzel”, and “Portulacas in the
Wheat”, and the novel, “Black Cherries”.
Twenty of her short stories were cited in Best American
Short Stories, and she was among the most widely published
American poets west of the Mississippi prior to World War
II. She served as assistant editor for the regional literary
journal, Frontier and Midland, of The University of Montana,
where she worked closely with legendary editor Harold G.
Merriam.
“Food
of Gods and Starvelings” contains the two collections
Coates published during her lifetime, plus more than seventy
uncollected poems drawn from literary journals and the poet’s
notebooks.
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Reviews
“Like a twentieth-century
Emily Dickinson, [Grace Stone Coates] writes of the world
around her from the small town of Martinsdale, Montana,
and her poetry is at once as sweeping and as precise
as the prairie she lived on. With startling imagery and
philosophical acuity, she explores the emotional landscape
between men and women, mothers and daughters, small-town
neighbors, and between a lonely woman and the landscape
she lives in. Her voice rings clear, her eye is sharp,
and her music is unerring.”
--Caroline
Patterson, editor of Montana Women Writers: A Geography
of the Heart
[Grace
Stone Coates is] a woman hungrily embittered but determined
to keep on facing life. . . . It is a volume of rhymed
eloquence, but some of the eloquent rhyming is trenchant
and searching.
—Harriet
Monroe , reviewing Coates' Mead and Mangel-Wurzel in Poetry:
A Magazine of Verse (1932)
Editors
Lee Rostad and Rick Newby make a wise choice in selecting
the poetry of Grace Stone Coates as the inaugural book
to be published by the Drumlummon Institute, and one
hopes that this treasure chest of Montana poetry soon
makes its way onto the syllabi of literature professors
throughout the West.
—Aaron
Parrett , Montana The Magazine of Western History
[Grace
Stone Coates] was a true poet of the Northern Plains:
one small, finite being in an enormous landscape of earth,
wind, passion, wonder and loneliness. Yet most of her
poems feature the emotional landscape: love, marriage,
loss, desire, grief. But these are not mere feelings;
they are phenomena, just like disease or sunlight. In [Coates],
even grief inspires wonder at its depth and shape. .
. . from Drumlummon Institute, Montana's unofficial curator
of literature, art and culture."
—Krys
Holmes, Montana Magazine
Press Release
Drumlummon Institute Publishes
Poems of Montana Writer Grace Stone Coates
With
the publication of Food of Gods and Starvelings: The
Selected Poems of Grace Stone Coates, Drumlummon Institute
of Helena, Montana, brings back into print the poetic works
of a leading 20th-century writer of the American
West. Edited by Lee Rostad and Rick Newby, the substantial
collection showcases more than 200 of Coates’ “irresistible,
poignant and authentic” poems.
Caroline
Patterson, editor of Montana Women Writers: A Geography
of the Heart, says of Food of Gods and Starvelings, “Like
a twentieth-century Emily Dickinson, [Grace Stone Coates]
writes of the world around her from the small town of Martinsdale,
Montana, and her poetry is at once as sweeping and as precise
as the prairie she lived on. With startling imagery and
philosophical acuity, she explores the emotional landscape
between men and women, mothers and daughters, small-town
neighbors, and between a lonely woman and the landscape
she lives in. Her voice rings clear, her eye is sharp,
and her music is unerring.”
During
her lifetime, Grace Stone Coates (1881-1976) published
two critically acclaimed collections of poems, Mead
and Mangel-Wurzel and Portulacas in the Wheat,
and the novel, Black Cherries. Twenty of her short
stories were cited in Best American Short Stories, and
she was among the most widely published American poets
west of the Mississippi prior to World War II. She served
as assistant editor for the regional literary journal, Frontier
and Midland, of The University of Montana, where
she worked closely with legendary editor Harold G. Merriam.
Food
of Gods and Starvelings contains the two collections
Coates published during her lifetime, plus more than
seventy uncollected poems drawn from literary journals
and the poet’s notebooks. Co-editor Lee Rostad
is author of the award-winning biography, Grace Stone
Coates: Her Life in Letters (Riverbend, 2004) and
recipient of the Montana Governor’s Award in the
Humanities, and co-editor Rick Newby has edited many
books, including The New Montana Story: An Anthology (Riverbend,
2003) and A Most Desperate Situation: Frontier Adventures
of a Young Scout, 1858-1864, by Walter Cooper (illustrations
by Charles M. Russell).
Food
of Gods and Starvelings: The Selected Poems of Grace
Stone Coates is available at bookstores or by calling
Riverbend Publishing, 1-866-787-2363. The 244-page softcover
book is available for $15.95. To order a review copy
or a copy signed by the two editors, write to Drumlummon
Institute, 402 Dearborn Ave. #3, Helena, MT 59601,
or send an email to info@drumlummon.org.
Other books you may enjoy:
Grace Stone Coates: Her Life in Letters
Notes for a Novel: The Selected Poems of Frieda Fligelman
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