Heidegger at Batoche : postmodernism in Western Canadian writing -- I am Butler : notes for an autobiographical long poem -- Identity and the Western writer : literary objects and literary saints -- Why I am not a good Ukrainian : a family fable -- The five city-states of the West : a prairie fantasy -- The urban prairie : between Jerusalem and Babylon -- Coming to Matador : dreams of the soil -- On being a self-styled guru of Western regionalism : an untrue confession -- Rivers of the mind : praying to water.

"Looks back at thirty years of Western Canadian identity and alienation through literature, politics, history and personal confession."--back cover.