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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Punk Poet tackles Lewis and Clark trek tonight

Dan Webster

Many of us, at one time or another, have fantasized about the explorers Lewis and Clark. My own fantasies have largely been confined to driving along sections of I-90 and thinking, "Wonder what it would have been like to come along here on horses, carrying everything you need to live, never knowing what was over the next ridge?"

And that would be about the time I'd reach out to turn up my car's air conditioning.

John Burgess has done some of the same kind of fantasizing. For years the Seattle poet has been writing poems about the two explorers, about Sacajawea and other aspects of their expedition. And he's been visiting many of the sites cited in the expedition records. Now he's collected a variety of mixed media, from poems to cartoons, drawings and personal reflections, into a book titled "by Land…"

Burgess will read from his book at 7 tonight at Auntie's Bookstore.

As he told Big Sky State Buzz, Burgess didn't organize the book to be read strictly front to back.

“It’s like finding your own way,” he said. “You can open the book and go through it in any way you want to. Mine is arbitrary and is the order I intersected with the trail, but you may have a different order you may want to read it in. I just didn’t want to restrict it to just how I did it.”