Between Heaven and Texas

By Sarah Bird and Wyman Meinzer

Between heaven and Texas, there's a sky that goes on forever. On cloudless mornings after a norther has blown through, the sky is such a perfect cobalt blue that you forget the "between" and know that heaven is Texas, or Texas is heaven--it doesn't really matter which. But most days there are clouds between Texas and heaven--puffy white clouds that set us dreaming on lazy summer days or roiling storm clouds that unleash lightning, tornadoes, and hail. The sky between heaven and Texas is a stage for drama more often than not, just like the lives we live below it. Perhaps that's why we're always looking up.

In this beautiful book, noted photographer Wyman Meinzer revisits the place that inspires his most creative work--the Texas sky. His photographs capture the vast dramas that occur between heaven and Texas--rainstorms that blot out mountain ranges, lightning strikes that dazzle a night-black prairie, trains of clouds that rumble for miles over wheat fields, sunsets that lave the whole wide sky in crimson, gold, and pink. Meinzer's striking images reveal that in the sky above, no less than on the land below, endless variety is commonplace in Texas.

Joining Meinzer in this celebration of the Texas sky are two fine writers, Sarah Bird and Naomi Shihab Nye. In her wonderfully personal introduction, Sarah Bird describes growing up as a dedicated cloud-watcher who, after several years among the cotton candy clouds and cool fogs of Japan, was shocked and exhilarated by the limitless hot skies of Texas. Naomi Nye has chosen poems by twenty-six Texas poets, including herself, which explore a spectrum of emotion about the sky above Texas and the weather in our lives beneath it. Together, photographs, memoir, and poems create a lasting connection with the power and presence of what Meinzer calls "that vast frontier and ocean above"--the sky between heaven and Texas.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292706553
• ISBN13: 9780292706552
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 2.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 10.3" x 11.2"

Customer Reviews

Texas is Heaven

And here is a book reflecting that: superb poetry, lovely photography, what a way to while away an afternoon.

Dazzling book of incredible photographs and delightful poetry

I had to add this review to clear any misunderstandings resulting from the only other review here, at this time, which, perhaps unintentionally, makes this book sound like a book of photographs. This beautiful hardcover book of impeccable quality, is also a book of poetry, edited by the highly accomplished Naomi Shihab Nye. The poems are coupled with the dazzling photographs in a dance that celebrate the mystery of life, under these Texas skies.

Photographs of the Sky

This book is unusal because it is photographs of the sky as it goes through different types of weather conditions. The photographs are beautiful and faith building.