The world lost an important voice this week. Ursula LeGuin died on Monday, age 88, after some months of ill health.

Today you could not open a newspaper or journal or relevant website without reading thoughtful obits, intensely varied and in their variety capturing the complexity of the author and the person – and all in awe of her.

I discovered LeGuin’s writings in the 1980s when I taught a psychology of women course at Lewis&Clark and came across a video where she expounded on issues of gender bias: in both directions. I still remember the students’ faces when after long discussions of women’s oppression she turned to the fact that young men have always been perceived to be the most expendable in any society and thus the perfect cannon fodder in wars throughout the ages. She saw the whole picture, not yielding just to please one side.

From then on I read her books with attention and pleasure, and not just her science fiction. Much of  her sharp, incisive observations and analysis first appeared in that genre – science fiction –  that many people unfortunately just shrug off as a literary category to be avoided. Her’s was political writing at its best, ignored by a public that often had stereotyped assumption about what science fiction literature is.

Of course she wrote in many genres, including poetry, and was also quite generous in her collaboration with other artists, be they photographers, writers or musicians. The numerous prizes and honors she won, the unconstrained admiration she received from her fellow writers, speak for themselves.

As much as her writings focused on “freedom from” oppression, bias, patriarchy, injustice and so on, I think her central theme was “freedom to” – in particular freedom to speak up, to act, to choose and create the kind of world you want to leave to the next generation.

Two years ago I attended a poetry reading at Broadway Books where she read some of her new poems. They resonated, among other things, because of their deep connection to a landscape which I count as particularly meaningful in my own little universe. I am attaching a poem that can be found in a book called OUT HERE, a contemplation on the Steens Mountain Landscape (with beyond gorgeous photography by Roger Dorband, a colleague who lives and works in Astoria.)

Check out his website: http://www.ravenstudiosart.com

She is in a different out there  now, with another way to be – or maybe relieved from ways of being, who knows. We are the poorer for it.

Here is her voice, set to the challenging and beautiful music by Eleanor Armer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdLXwjyb7w

Photographs of the creatures and landscapes mentioned in the poem are all from the Steen Mountains.