Our Mother, The Mountain

"A tender work of many needed returns, I am glad it's in the world"
-Dan Beachy-Quick, author of Variations on Dawn and Dusk, longlisted for 2019 National Book Award

Our Mother, The Mountain
by Alexander Shalom Joseph

Up here in the wind rip and nine month winter, between the pines and the aspens and the hollows and the cliffs, there are some who have chosen to hide out, to call these high alpine hills and valleys home. There are many reasons we have fled to the edges of the world, some of which I will never know. This work touches on what life is like up in these woods, as well as the things we ponder and sift through within ourselves as we sit by our fires, chop our wood, walk over dirt and snow, haul our spring water and work our many jobs. Our Mother, the Mountain is a title taken from a song by Townes Van Zandt, a man who happened to grow up not far from here. This is a collection of words written at above 9000 feet, about the life up here, all of which were originally published in a weekly column in the local newspaper, The Mountain Ear.


Praise for Our Mother, The Mountain

In these, the strangest of times, Alexander Shalom Joseph has lashed himself to the mast, apertures jammed wide open and utterly permeable to our careening world. Like all true poets, he doesn't distinguish between himself and what is unfolding around him, blurring internal and external landscapes.

-Logan Hebner, author of Southern Paiute: a Portrait



By the light of one fire, we gather together a life; by the light of another, we gather every object of care we can hold, and then we run. I suspect many readers of this volume will be sure to gather it-a little good company by which to build the next house, and the next world.

-Dan Beachy-Quick, author of Variations on Dawn and Dusk, longlisted for 2019 National Book Award


When I put this book down, I felt the same satisfaction as after a day of splitting wood. In these days of pandemic and war threat stress, these wonderful prose poems remind us to look up and within.

-Mike Parker, author of Kimono Mountains


These flashes of beauty chronical the subtle and rich beauty of living and working in this world in skillfully scrolling moments stitched together by hand and imbued with the unique regional rurality, tones and mood of the high country life.

-David Anthony Martin, author Bijoux and The Ground Nest.


About the Author

It's said in the Talmud that there are three ways to be a good Jew: study, prayer and acts of loving kindness- Alexander Shalom Joseph thinks of his writing and work as a teacher as a mix of all three. Alexander is the author of three published books and many published individual poems and short stories. His published books include the story collection American Wasteland, published by owl canyon press...