Written on Water

Poetry. Music. Edited by Helen Ruggieri and Linda Underhill. Includes bonus CD of songs and poems, featuring Pete Seeger, Peter LaFarge, Jerome Rothenberg and the Allegheny Valley Singers. Contributors are: Allegheny Mountain Singers of the Seneca Nation, Maggie Anderson, Murray Bodo, David Budbill, Paola Corso, Bonnie Lee Culver, R. Virgil Ellis, Arthur Erbe, Rina Ferrarelli, Howie Good, Handsome Lake, Jim Kacian, Julia Kasdorf, Maurice Kenny, Judith Kerman, Thomas Krampf, Peter...
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Poetry. Music. Edited by Helen Ruggieri and Linda Underhill. Includes bonus CD of songs and poems, featuring Pete Seeger, Peter LaFarge, Jerome Rothenberg and the Allegheny Valley Singers. Contributors are: Allegheny Mountain Singers of the Seneca Nation, Maggie Anderson, Murray Bodo, David Budbill, Paola Corso, Bonnie Lee Culver, R. Virgil Ellis, Arthur Erbe, Rina Ferrarelli, Howie Good, Handsome Lake, Jim Kacian, Julia Kasdorf, Maurice Kenny, Judith Kerman, Thomas Krampf, Peter LaFarge, David Langva, Steve Lewandowski, lyn lifshin, Robert E. McDonough, Jill Alane Moore, Carol Newman, Ed Ochester, Doug Ramspeck, Skip Renker, Liz Rosenberg, Jerome Rothenberg, Sankar Roy, Helen Ruggieri, Steve Sanfield, Mike Seeger, Pete Seeger, Richard Simpson, Francine Sterle, Judith Strasser, Philip Terman, Linda Underhill, Karen Weyant, Martin Willits Jr., Judy Yogman, and Andrena Zawinski.

The Allegheny River is the easternmost, west-flowing river in the United States and was a major thoroughfare for early settlers, European and Native American. This anthology looks at the Allegheny historically and as both a recreation area and a spiritual area today. The poems and prose pieces detail the full flow of the river, beginning near Port Allegany, PA; crossing the state line into New York; dropping back into Pennsylvania through small towns and forests; and merging with the Monongahela at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. When it was dammed by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s, the Seneca Reservation lands (a mile on each side of the river) were flooded and the residents displaced. The land given by treaty to the Senecas by George Washington for as long as the grass is green and the sky is blue is now under mud and water. The Kinzua Dam protects Pittsburgh from flooding according to the Corps. You'll read laments, you'll read celebrations. You'll hear chants, songs, and poems on the enclosed CD, performed by Pete Seeger, Peter LaFarge, Jerome Rothenberg, Maggie Anderson, the Senecas, and more. This print and audio anthology documents the river that was, the river that is, the river of the mind, and the river of the spirit.