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The Osage Orange Tree, a never-before-published story by beloved poet William Stafford, is about young love complicated by misunderstanding and the insecurity of adolescence, set against the backdrop of poverty brought on by the Great Depression. The narrator recalls a girl he once knew. He and Evangeline, both shy, never find the courage to speak to each other in high school. Every evening, however, Evangeline meets him at the Osage orange tree on the edge of her property. He delivers a newspaper to her, and they talk—and as the year progresses a secret friendship blossoms. This magical coming-of-age tale is brought to life through linocut illustrations by Oregon artist Dennis Cunningham, with an afterword by poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a personal friend of Stafford’s.
In the tradition of the work of great fiction writers like Steinbeck, O’Connor, and Welty, The Osage Orange Tree stands the test of time, not just as an ode to a place and a generation but as a testament to the resilience of a nation and the strength of the human heart.
In the tradition of the work of great fiction writers like Steinbeck, O’Connor, and Welty, The Osage Orange Tree stands the test of time, not just as an ode to a place and a generation but as a testament to the resilience of a nation and the strength of the human heart.
Price: $14.95
Pages: 64
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Imprint: Trinity University Press
Publication Date:
21 January 2014
Trim Size: 7.50 X 5.00 in
ISBN: 9781595341846
Format: Hardcover
“This shy paperboy meets a girl who wears a faded blue dress, and they strike up a tentative friendship that lasts through the school year. There's a twist, O. Henry on the Prairie, and the story ends the way it had to. The writing is clean, the emotion is earned, and it's too bad Stafford didn't try more fiction on a few more of those early morning writing sessions.”— The Portland Oregonian
William Stafford was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1914, and is known as a pacifist and prolific poet and writer. During his lifetime, he published more than 65 volumes of poetry, including Traveling Through the Dark, which was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 1963. He has received many distinguished honors including the Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a western States Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry. He also served as the twentieth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970 (this position is now known as the Poet Laureate). In 1940, Stafford was drafted and served as a conscientious objector, and later wrote a memoir about conscientious objectors, Down in my Heart. At the time of his death (August 1993), he lived in Portland, OR.
— William Stafford
Dennis Cunningham is a printmaker with a long history of exhibitions, awards, public art works, and publications. He has taught at Marylhurst University since 1986. According to Cunningham, his work is grounded in “my awareness as a child that I wanted to be an artist. Everything I have done in the past forty years stems from that optimistic vision of my place in the world. I continue to hold that childhood desire: it nourishes me every day I work.”
— Dennis Cunningham
Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and lived in Palestine, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she studied at Trinity University. She is the author of numerous poetry books, including You and Yours, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Fuel, and Red Suitcase. Her honors include awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and the International Poetry Forum, the Carity Randall Prize, the Academy of American Poets’ Lavan Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan fellow, a Guggenheim fellow, and a Witter Bynner fellow, and she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the U.S. Information Agency three times, promoting international goodwill through the arts. She lives in San Antonio.
— Naomi Shihab Nye
— William Stafford
Dennis Cunningham is a printmaker with a long history of exhibitions, awards, public art works, and publications. He has taught at Marylhurst University since 1986. According to Cunningham, his work is grounded in “my awareness as a child that I wanted to be an artist. Everything I have done in the past forty years stems from that optimistic vision of my place in the world. I continue to hold that childhood desire: it nourishes me every day I work.”
— Dennis Cunningham
Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and lived in Palestine, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she studied at Trinity University. She is the author of numerous poetry books, including You and Yours, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Fuel, and Red Suitcase. Her honors include awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and the International Poetry Forum, the Carity Randall Prize, the Academy of American Poets’ Lavan Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan fellow, a Guggenheim fellow, and a Witter Bynner fellow, and she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the U.S. Information Agency three times, promoting international goodwill through the arts. She lives in San Antonio.
— Naomi Shihab Nye