Ursula K. LeGuin - Buffalo Girls.pdf - Ursula K. LeGuin - widez2

PRAISE FOR URSULA K. LE GUIN AND BUFFALO GALS AND OTHER ANIMAL

PRESENCES "Ursula Le Guin, one of the most significant science fiction writ-ers of the past two

decades, charms the reader with some glimpses of greatness . . . this disarmingly informal volume of short

fic-tion ... is like a visit with one of America's most brilliant writers."

— Santa Barbara News-Press

"Refreshing . . . these stories are a strong tonic for many modern

spiritual ills."

— Santa Cruz Sentinel

"A delightful collection . . . designed to shatter your world view."

— Riverside Press Enterprise

"How wonderful to be in the hands of an accomplished storyteller like Ursula K. Le Guin, whose work

shares in that imaginative transformation of the world sometimes called magical realism, sci-ence fiction,

or fantasy."

— Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Ursula Le Guin . . . transcends genre and delivers a delightful collection of works. . . . The effect is a

disturbing and delicious disorientation that makes us resee ourselves and our relationship to the world.

What she does with craft and good humor will both

entertain and educate."

— Santa Barbara

URSULA K. LE GUIN is an outstanding American writer whose works include science fiction, fantasy,

young adult fiction, chil-dren's books, essays and poems. She has received numerous awards including

the Nebula, Hugo, Kafka, and National Book Awards. Among her best known novels are The Left

Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, Earthsea (a Trilogy), and Always Com-ing Home.

NAL BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE

PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM

MARKETING DIVISION. NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY, 1633 BROADWAY, NEW YORK,

NEW YORK 10019.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Goodman; reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Excerpt from "Original

"Elegy" by Rainer Maria Rilke is the translation of Ursula K. Le Guin. "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come

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Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Epoch, edited by Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood. "Torrey

Ursula K. Le Guin; first appeared in Hard Words by Ursula K. Le Guin, Harper & Row, 1981. "Winter

Carr. "The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts From the Journal of the Association of

93120.

This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover edition published by Capra Press.

PLUME TRADEMARK REO. US PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES REGISTERED

TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN CHICAGO. U.S.A.

signet, signet classic, mentor, onyx, plume, meridian

and NALbooks are published in the United States by NAL PENGUIN INC.,

1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019,

in Canadaby The New American Library of Canada Limited,

81 Mack Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario MIL IMS

Library of Congress Cataloging-ln-Publication

LeGuin, Ursula K., 1929-

Buffalo gals and other animal presences / by Ursula K. Le Guin. p. cm.

ISBN 0-452-26139-2 (pbk.)

1. Animals—Literary collections. I. Title.

[PS3562.E42B8 1988] 88-15583 813'.54—dc!9

CIP Design and typography by Jim Cook

Page 2

(Santa Barbara, California). First Plume Printing, September, 1988 123456789

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Introduction.......................... 9

"Come Into Animal Presence" (Denise Levertov) .................... 14

I. Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight .... 17

II. Three Rock Poems .................... 55

The Basalt ......................... 56

Flints ............................ 56

Mt St Helens/Omphalos ................ 57

III. "The Wife's Story" and "Mazes" ............ 61

Mazes ............................ 61

The Wife's Story ...................... 67

IV. Five Vegetable Poems .................. 75

Torrey Pines Reserve ................... 76

Lewis and Clark and After ............... 77

West Texas ......................... 77

Xmas Over ......................... 78

The Crown of Laurel................... 78

V. "The Direction of the Road" and "Vaster Than Empires" .................. 83

The Direction of the Road ............... 84

Vaster Than Empires and More Slow ......... 92

VI. Seven Bird and Beast Poems ............. 131

What is Going on in the Oaks ............ 132

ForTed .......................... 133

Found Poem ....................... 134

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Totem ........................... 134

Winter Downs ...................... 135

The Man Eater ..................... 135

SleepingOut ....................... 136

VII. "The White Donkey" and "Horse Camp" ..... 139

The White Donkey ................... 140

Horse Camp ....................... 143

VIII. Four Cat Poems ..................... 151

Tabby Lorenzo ...................... 152

Black Leonard in Negative Space .......... 152

A Conversation With a Silence ........... 153

For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson ..... 153

IX "Schrodinger's Cat" and

"The Author of the Acacia Seeds" .......... 157

SchrOdinger's Cat .................... 158

The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of Therolinguistics ....... 167

X. "May's Lion" ....................... 179

May's Lion ........................ 179

XI. Rilke's "Eighth Duino Elegy" and ;, "She Unnames Them" ................. 191 |

The Eighth Elegy, from the f Duino Elegies of RM. Rilke ............. 191

She Unnames Them .................. 194

Buffalo

Gals

Introduction

ALTHOUGH I WHINED and tried to hide under the rug my inexorable publisher demanded an

introduction for this book of my stories and poems about animals. Having done introductions before, I

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have found that many readers loathe them, reviewers sneer at them, and critics dismiss them; and then

they all tell me so. As for myself I rather like introductions, but generally read them after reading what

they were supposed to introduce me to. Read as extra-ductions, they are often interesting and useful. But

that won't do. Ductions must be intro, and come first, like salad in restaurants, a lot of cardboard lettuce

with bits of red wooden cabbage soaked in dressing so that you're disabled for the entree.

The kind of introduction that conies naturally is oral. Reading aloud to an audience, one often talks a little

about what one is going to read; and so for each section of this book I have tried to write down the kind

of thing I might say about the pieces if I were performing them.

As for the book as a whole: first of all I am grateful to my inexorable publisher for having the idea of

doing such a collection, and for asking me to write a long new story for it It was his request that gave me

the story "Buffalo Gals." Three other stories have not been printed in book form before, and twelve of the

poems have not been printed anywhere till now. They are not all exactly about animals. In fact this is a

sort of Twenty Questions anthology—

10 JT BUFFALO GALS

animal, vegetable, or mineral? But the animals, naturally, are more active. And more talkative.

What about talking animals, anyhow?

In his literary biography of Rudyard Kipling so sympa-thetic and perceptive a reader/writer as Angus

Wilson dis-misses the Jungle Books as schoolboy stories with animal costumes, and has no truck at all

with the fust So Stories. As I think the Jungle Books, along with the other "children's story," Kim, are

Kipling's finest work, and consider the fust So Stories a unique and miraculous interaction of prose with

poetry with graphics, of adult mind with child mind, and of written with oral literature—a shining

intersection among endless dreary one-way streets—so Wilson's dismis-sal of them was something I

needed to understand. Not that it was anything unusual. Critical terror of Kiddilit is common. People to

whom sophistication is a positive intel-lectual value shun anything "written for children"; if you want to

clear the room of derrideans, mention Beatrix Pot-ter without sneering. With the agreed exception of

Alice in Wonderland, books for children are to be mentioned only dismissively or jocosely by the adult

male critic. Just as Angus Wilson used to dismiss Virginia Woolf uncomforta-bly, jocosely, as a lady

novelist, though he finally and cred-itably admitted that he might have missed something there... In

literature as in "real life," women, children, and animals are the obscure matter upon which Civilization

erects itself, phallologically. That they are Other is (vide Lacan etal.} the foundation of language, the

Father Tongue. If Man vs. Nature is the name of the game, no wonder the team players kick out all these

non-men who won't learn the rules and run around the cricket pitch squeaking and barking and

chattering! But then, who are the Bandar-Log? Why do animals in kids' books talk? Why do animals in

myths talk? How come the prince eats a burned fish-scale

Introduction'^.11

and all of a sudden understands what the mice in the wall are saying about the kingdom? How come on

Christmas night the beasts in the stables speak to one another in human voices? Why does the tortoise

say, "111 race you," to the hare, and how does Coyote tell Death, "111 do exactly what you tell me!"

Animals don't talk—everybody knows that Everybody, including quite small children, and the men and

women who told and tell talking-animal stories, knows that animals are dumb: have no words of their

own. So why do we keep putting words into their mouths?

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Ursula K. LeGuin - Buffalo Girls.pdf

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