There is an old story about a small fish asking, "Where is the sea?" And the answer: "The sea is all around you, above you and beneath you. You are in the sea and the sea is in you. You cannot sense it because you are too close."

Because we are too close we often lose track of the important things around us. It is the job of the artist to re-animate our senses. With verbal and photographic image Richard Lyons has firmly placed his reader In North Dakota.

Like an archaeologist carefully picking stones from ancient bones, Lyons reveals the past of his adopted state and places it in the present. He describes the towns, analyzes the effect of the military-industrial complex, finds solace in the images of graveyards, and responds to the ancient messages of the Indian way.

His techniques are several. Deriving from the series of slide programs created for the state committees on the arts and on the humanities, the book is a series of poems illustrated with photographs. Sometimes the statements are simple--show and tell. Sometimes the technique is juxtaposition--placing side-by-side the old and the new, the natural and the manufactured, the mythical and the factual. Sometimes the technique is complex and metaphorical as in the longer poems like "The Flood and the Fair" and "Slant Village."

The answer to the question "Where is North Dakota?" is in this book. It is all around us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Lyons was Professor of English and poet at North Dakota State University from 1950 to 1982, specializing in interdisciplinary studies in American Culture. He came to North Dakota in time to join with the newly organized North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies in its investigation of the culture, history, and heritage of North Dakota. His poems have been appearing in magazines since 1944, from the Quarterly Review of Literature and The Kenyon Review to The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Nation. He was also a graphic artist who had paintings and prints in regional and national exhibitions in in magazines.