Oregon Humanities

Art, meat, and enlightenment in American sport fishing

Oregon Council for the Humanities sponsors a free public event on June 6 in Bend.

13 May 2008 | Permalink

The closure of nearly all ocean salmon fishing in Oregon this year will have a devastating financial impact on working-class Oregonians who make their living in the state’s multimillion dollar fishing industry.
But besides being a profitable industry, sport fishing, whether catch-and-release fly-fishing on Central Oregon’s pristine rivers or bait-and-hook fishing on the Oregon Coast’s fisheries-stocked waters, is also a strong symbol of the region’s identity.
Oregon Book Award-winning poet Henry Hughes, a dedicated angler who uses both bait and fly, explores how the sport illuminates human relationships to art and nature at a free public event, “Crossing (Class) Lines: Art, Meat, and the American Angler,” at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, Father Luke Room, 700 NW Bond St., Bend, on Friday, June 6, 2008, at 7:30 p.m., with a reception to follow. The event is part of the Commonplace Series, sponsored by the Oregon Council for the Humanities (OCH).
Hughes says that although the history of fishing can be traced back to a leisure activity for the elite, the sport’s modern variations, which include bass tournaments and thousand dollar fly rods, offer a more complex and intriguing view of American culture.
“We think of leisure time for sports like fishing as something afforded to the middle and upper classes,” Hughes says. “But because fishing could put meat on the table, help one forget worries, or be done at its simplest with a stick, string, and bent pin, it has always had adherents among the poor and disenfranchised.”
Hughes, an associate professor of English at Western Oregon University in Monmouth, is the author of the poetry collection Men Holding Eggs, which won the Oregon Book Award in 2004. His poetry, nonfiction, and fiction have been featured in several journals and magazines, including Poetry East, Northwest Review, and OCH’s Oregon Humanities magazine.
OCH’s Commonplace Series events are offered three times a year throughout the state. For these events, OCH engages public scholars as lecturers, panelists, and facilitators to explore provocative issues and spark community conversations. Past presentations, which have covered topics such as immigration, land-use development, and community revitalization, are available as chapbooks or audio files at the OCH website (http://www.oregonhum.org).