Keen-eyed readers of NDQ will remember that in issue 91.3/4 we reprinted a pair of poems from the North Dakota poet Clell Gannon. These poems were meant as a kind of amuse-bouche for the re-publication of Gannon’s Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres.
Today, we are very happy today to present the main course:
It is my pleasure to announce the publication of Clell Gannon’s Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres by The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota.
Gannon, a prairie poet, painter, and public intellectual first published these this slim book of poetry in 1924. This book reprints it with two brilliant contextualizing essays by Aaron Barth and Tom Isern, both of whom are worthy successors to Gannon’s legacy as public intellectual on the prairie. This volume also includes a reprint of an article by Gannon that described his boat float down the Missouri River. This article appeared in the very first issue of North Dakota History in 1926. The book also preserved and gently enhanced Gannon’s line-style illustrations throughout the book.
Since Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres is now in the public domain, and The Digital Press thought it only responsible to release this expanded edition under an open access license.
Special thanks go to the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation, Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation, and the Northern Plains Heritage Alliance for helping this happen!
North Dakota Quarterly 