Appalachian Studies

I've been reading Anne Shelby's latest collection of poems "Appalachian Studies". Actually I finished my third reading of the book yesterday. Anne lives and creates her gems up in those misty mountains of Southeastern Kentucky where I did my growing up. This book is, from my perspective anyway, a wonderful tribute to the history and people of the region. Where the "hollers" are so deep they have to pipe sunshine in. The book is at times like talking to an old friend from those mountains. From the poem/song, "Ballad of Clay County", to "Where I'm From", and "Heart of The World". They often evoke a time when the Kentucky Appalachians were a society and a life unto themselves, as many rural places were. Anne also highlights the mountains as they are today with:
I hope you won't be too put out
if you find more jeans and T-shirts here
than gingham print and overalls.
It's meth, and marijuana, not moonshine now."
--Other Side of Rock Creek"
and the "New Old Kentucky Home". these are people and places I used to know, and where they are today. It's relatives, ghosts, and images that will stick in your head:
.."I don't mention
the bacon I smell frying
Winter mornings before daylight
when all I've got is oatmeal,
the blue-clad figure
at the edge of the field,
the smoke still rising
from long dead fires"
--"Homeplace"
She touches on losses that will(and has) hit us all:
"Open your eyes-
house as still as tombs.
It's a funny feeling, now,
I'll tell you.
You don't know a thing
till you've lost your mother."
--A Funny Feeling
From there you're taken to the Hell of abused women in, "Waiting For Daylight(for the Kentucky seven-women imprisoned for killing their abusers)". I can't mention and excerpt all the poems Anne has included in Appalachian Studies (and she wouldn't let me anyway)but just one more:
"Walking the roadside in August heat,
past the time of bloodroot
and spring beauties, past blackberry time,
not afraid anymore
of young men in cars passing,
invisible to them, a woman of fifty, fading,
in housedress and hiking shoes,
walking stick in one hand,
Field Guide to Wildflowers of Kentucky
in the other-"
--Late Blooming Flora
Appalachian Studies is a wonderful book of poetry and snippets of life in rural America. I really enjoyed it. Thanks Anne!