Ellen Waterston, Between Desert Seasons (2008)
Content warning:
Death, substance abuse, violence
Synopsis
The poetry collection Between Desert Seasons by Ellen Waterston centers largely on the unique perspective of mundane life in a rural desert community in Eastern Oregon. From connections working and living on a ranch, to neighborhood interactions, to tracking life and seasons with the river and the stars, Waterston brings the desert seasons, and reflections during time in other portions of Oregon, to the page.
Essay
Nearly every poem in Between Desert Seasons ties back to Oregon in one way or another. More often than not, this is through the direct locational references, though landscape descriptions, specific details of local wildlife, and occupational trades often appear as threads to ground the story in the Oregon setting.
In her collection, Waterston investigates the interiority of life in rural ranching communities in Eastern Oregon. Her poem “My Dad is a Rancher” explores the relationship between ranching, one of the more common occupations on the desert side of the state, and addiction, which is unfortunately a common though often explored aspect of this same community. Although Oregon is not specifically named in this poem, Waterston grounds the reader in the state through its contexts of ranching and land use.
The poem “Profit and Loss,” situated directly before “My Dad is a Rancher” in the collection, includes grounded ties of this cattle ranching industry in Eastern Oregon. Details such as views of the Cascade Mountains give the reader-in-the-know a clear picture in their mind of the scenes Waterston is reflecting on.
Resiliency of wildlife in the often unforgiving desert is another grounding tool to center poems in Oregon. In the piece “Harney Lake,” the title itself reveals the location of southeast Oregon, but smaller details throughout the poem add to this effect, as well. The lupine flowers grow despite the hostile environment of an alkali basin.
This collection ventures beyond the rural desert, too, weaving into other landscapes familiar in Oregon. The poem “Luck of the Divide” carries the story of rain clouds heading east, full of water, traveling over the state originating over the Pacific Ocean. This poem explores locations such as the Willamette Valley, Mary’s River, Alsea, and other locations nestled in the Coast Range mountains.
Waterston is acutely aware of the perceptions of Eastern Oregon as she walks the reader through her collection. One poem in particular, “Never Say Woah in a Horse Race,” places a “City Girl” and a “Country Boy” beside each other as the two primary segments in this poem. Both attending the horse race in question, Waterston shows the perspectives of two identities in the parallel scenario.
“Take a River” not only mentions Bend, Oregon, as the setting for this poem, but expands the context by inserting a timeframe, too. Directly under the title, an attribution with the years “1905-2005” provides a centennial range as a lens for the reader to assume in the piece. This poem is the longest piece in her collection, and pulls the strongest for cultural ties in the state. Calling forward the youth of Bend as a city, but the history and ancestry in the land itself, Waterston acknowledges the records of life in Oregon beyond the limits of settled civilizations. By naming specific Indigenous Chiefs in the region, tying generations of stories prior to the colonization of the land into the present, and questioning what Indigenous life may look like in Bend after another hundred years, Waterston is also naming her place in the region as something “new.” She is confronting the place she has made for herself in a community which has been bent (in reference to the town name of Bend) by hostile influences that are now trying to branch the community, and she is using her voice as a writer in a position of privilege to take a step back and shift her perspective towards the influences on the land present far before her arrival there.
Not originally from Oregon, Waterston is aware of her newcomer relationship to the region and does not shy from acknowledging this in her work. That being said, she is balancing it with a direct intention of mindfulness to this position in the community, and supporting those who were there before: not only in regard to long-standing Indigenous communities and traditions, but to the newly established cities and farming communities she finds herself integrating with.
Author Bio
Based out of Bend, Oregon, Ellen Waterston is serving in her second term as Oregon Poet Laureate. Much of her work is focused on her home in Eastern Oregon. Waterston is the recipient of an honorary PhD in Arts and Humanities from Oregon State University-Cascades. In addition to her work as an author, Waterston founded the for-profit Writing Ranch, which offers retreats and workshops for established and emerging writers, and the Bend-based literary arts nonprofit The Nature of Words, which she directed for over a decade.
Further Reading
Ellen Waterston, We Could Die Doing This (2025)
- More by Waterston
Anis Mojgani, The Tigers, They Let Me (2023)
- Former Oregon Poet Laureate