Inscribed by author "For Dean and for the archives that keep breathing all praise 21 March 2016"

Author served in Vietnam

From http://bluebegoniapress.com/catalogbodeen-jim_270.html:

Whole Houses Shaking is a blood-transfusion. He takes the word, kin, often an occasion to glorify or revile one’s roots, and re-infused it with kindness. This is grown-up work. The acceptance of loss and the care with which emotions in a family’s history can be chronicled and even mapped are the booty of frequent raids on the wasteland of the American psyche. Yet the poems avoid the predictabilities of myth and take on adulthood as Whitman and later James Wright challenged us to.” —Michael Daley

Born in a small town in North Dakota, he graduated from high school in Seattle and was in the army in charge of medical evacuation in Panama and Vietnam.

He returned to Central Washington, earning a master’s degree in English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg in 1971. He also attended Seattle University’s summer programs on Vatican II for three years with his wife, Karen—the only Lutherans studying Lutheran theologians with Catholic priests and nuns—earning a second master’s degree in religious education.

“In 1988, I became aware of the cycle of migration into the Yakima Valley that meant Latino students came and went from classes, and that many in my English classes spoke Spanish,” Jim said.

On spring break, he found them in asparagus fields. He followed them for three years to learn their stories, which he published in “The Asparagus Journal.”

The students read their stories live on stage throughout the state, at the Seattle Repertory Theatre Bumbershoot Arts Festival and at a National Migrant Conference.

While giving them voice, he watched them grow up and settle in the Yakima Valley or go on.

Alberto Cardenes, who picked strawberries, is now a teacher and wrestling coach at Eisenhower High. José Garcia is cross-country coach at Davis. Another student, Eloisa Gonzales, graduated from Gonzaga University and works for a newspaper in Delaware."