From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems

By James Still and Ted Olson

“One of our greatest American poets. In particular he has captured the spirit and language of the Appalachian South . . . like no other.” —Lee Smith, New York Times-bestselling author

James Still first achieved national recognition in the 1930s as a poet. Although he is better known today as a writer of fiction, it is his poetry that many of his essential images, such as the “mighty river of earth,” first found expression. Yet much of his poetry remains out of print or difficult to find.

From the Mountain, From the Valley collects all of Still’s poems, including several never before published, and corrects editorial mistakes that crept into previous collections. The poems are presented in chronological order, allowing the reader to trace the evolution of Still’s voice. Throughout, his language is fresh and vigorous and his insight profound. His respect for people and place never sounds sentimental or dated.

Ted Olson’s introduction recounts Still’s early literary career and explores the poetic origins of his acclaimed lyrical prose. Still himself has contributed the illuminating autobiographical essay “A Man Singing to Himself,” which will appeal to every lover of his work.

“Still’s is the distinctive voice of Appalachia, and we are most fortunate to have his best work in this single beautiful volume.” —Louisville Courier-Journal

“Still works in traditional lyric forms and with traditional lyric tools. Rarely does a poem need a second page. The best poems are tight and demonstrate a quiet mastery, even a humble virtuosity.” —Journal of Appalachian Studies

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9780813146164

Book preview

From the

Mountain

From the

Valley

New and

Collected Poems

James Still

Edited by Ted Olson

Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Copyright © 2001 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre

College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,

The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,

Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,

Morehead State University, Murray State University,

Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,

University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,

and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508–4008

05  04  03  02  01    5  4  3  2  1

All previously published poems are reprinted here by permission. Previous publication information appears in the bibliography.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Still, James, 1906-

From the mountain, from the valley: new and collected poems / James

Still; edited by Ted Olson.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-8131-2199-X (acid-free paper)

1. Appalachian Region, Southern–Poetry. I. Olson, Ted. II. Title.

PS3537.T5377 F76 2001

811'.52–dc21                                 00-012280

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

To my loved ones:

Teresa Lynn, Kaila Ann,

Jacob Alexander, and Hiram

Contents

Preface

A Man Singing to Himself: An Autobiographical Essay by James Still

The Poems

Dreams

Burned Tree

Fallow Years

The Bright Road

Artifacts

Answer

Let This Hill Rest

Lambs

Swift Were Their Feet

Wilderness

Dulcimer

Horse Swapping

Mountain Fox Hunt

Infare

When the Dulcimers Are Gone

Reckoning

Heritage

Death on the Mountain

Shield of Hills

Uncle Ambrose

Clabe Mott

The Hill-Born

Aftergrass

Child in the Hills

Passenger Pigeons

Farm

Fox Hunt on Defeated Creek

Foal

Post Offices

Earth-Bread

On Troublesome Creek

Interval

Graveyard

Tracks on Stone

Coal Town

Fiddlers’ Convention on Troublesome Creek

Journey Beyond the Hills

Rain on the Cumberlands

Dance on Pushback

I Was Born Humble

On Redbird Creek

Pattern for Death

Yesteryear’s People

A Hillsman Speaks

Spring

Hounds on the Mountain

Horseback in the Rain

With Hands Like Leaves

River of Earth

White Highways

Court Day

On Double Creek

Night in the Coal Camps

Epitaph for Uncle Ira Combs, Mountain Preacher

Nixie Middleton

Come Down from the Hills

Eyes in the Grass

On Buckhorn Creek

Year of the Pigeons

Where the Mares Have Fed

A Man Singing to Himself

Now Has Day Come

I Shall Go Singing

Leap, Minnows, Leap

Morning: Dead Mare Branch

A Child’s Wisdom

Banjo Bill Cornett

Fiddle

Mountain Men Are Free

Hill-Lonely

Death in the Hills

This Man Dying

Granny Frolic

Passing of a County Sheriff

Drought

Apples

The Broken Ibis

Early Whippoorwill

Abandoned House

Wolfpen Creek

Apple Trip

Funnel Spider

The Trees in the Road

Lamp

Man O’ War

Lizard

On Being Drafted into the U.S. Army from My Log Home in March 1942

Candidate

Winter Tree

Welcome, Somewhat, Despite the Disorder

Of the Wild Man

Day of Flowers

Hunter

Are You Up There, Bad Jack?

Visitor

The Common Crow

After Some Twenty Years Attempting to Describe a Flowering Branch of Redbud

On the Passing of My Brother Alfred

What Have You Heard Lately?

Madly to Learn

High Field

Unemployed Coal Miner

Apples in the Well

Death of a Fox

In My Dreaming

Here in My Bed

Yesterday in Belize

Artist

Of the Faithful

Knife Trader

Truck Driver

Okra King

Could It Be

Of Concern

Dove

Here and Now

Mine Is a Wide Estate

My Aunt Carrie

Mrs. Lloyd, Her Rag Sale

Recollection

At Year’s End

Those I Want in Heaven with Me Should There Be Such a Place

My Days

Bibliography

Index of Titles

Index of First Lines

Preface

Ted Olson

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, James Still was known primarily as the writer of River of Earth (1940), a novel that many people have identified as one of the finest literary responses to the American Great Depression. He is anything but a single-work author, though, having produced another novel (Sporty Creek, 1977, revised edition 1999), numerous short stories, several children’s books (perhaps the most widely read of these has been Jack and the Wonder Beans, 1977, reprinted 1996), a folklore study (The Wolfpen Notebooks: A Record of Appalachian Life, 1991), and many poems. Still has displayed prodigious ability with all of the literary genres in which he has worked. His fiction has been widely praised by critics and general readers; his children’s literature is loved by those who have read it, young and old alike; and his documentary, folkloric writing has gained the respect of scholars for its keen insight into pre-industrial Appalachian life. His poetry, while a generally overlooked component of his oeuvre, is arguably the foundation for all his work in other literary genres.

Poetry has certainly been Still’s longest-lasting literary interest. His first published poem, Dreams, saw print in April 1931, more than four years before the publication of any of his fictional works. While not producing much fiction after the 1950s, Still continued to place new poems in the pages of respected literary periodicals into the 1990s; for instance, one of the best-loved of Still’s poems among contemporary readers, Those I Want in Heaven with Me Should There Be Such a Place, was written and published in the early 1990s.

In the 1930s Still’s poetry appeared in some of the most prestigious periodicals in the United States, including Atlantic, Nation, New Republic, New York Times, Poetry, Sewanee Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review; yet, by the end of the twentieth century, his poetry was generally overlooked in national literary circles and not widely known in Appalachia (though, to its credit, Kentucky named Still that state’s Poet Laureate for the period 1995 to 1997). Still’s fiction has received much more attention, likely in part a consequence of the American literary culture’s longstanding tendency to privilege fiction over other literary genres. Of course, his fiction certainly merits attention. His novels and short stories balance observational objectivity with linguistic expressiveness, simplicity of narrative presentation with thematic complexity—by any standard a commendable aesthetic achievement. Still’s fiction never garnered a sustained national readership like some of his contemporaries (such as Eudora Welty) who similarly set their work in specific American regions, probably because Still focused on an often-stereotyped, long misunderstood region and regional culture, a choice of subject that limited his national appeal. Nonetheless, his fiction has secured for the author a lasting reputation as a central figure in Appalachian literature.

Collecting all of Still’s mature poetry within a single, chronologically arranged volume should elucidate an over-arching irony in his career: that Still’s literary voice—nowadays associated primarily with his fiction—evolved through his writing of poetry. Approximately one-third of the poems in From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems had already been written—and many of those poems had already been published—when, in 1936, Still’s first significant piece of fiction, the short story All Their Ways Are Dark, was accepted for publication in Atlantic. The degree to which Still’s poetry went unnoticed after his emergence as a fiction writer is evident from the phrasing of a 1983 letter sent to Still by James Dickey (another author whose poetry has been overshadowed by his later work in fiction), in which Dickey related his excitement over recently discovering Still’s first poetry volume Hounds on the Mountain, published in 1937 by Viking Press: I had known from your prose work that your vision is essentially that of a poet, [and] I wanted very much to see what happened when you got it [Still’s vision] into lines.

The tendency to overlook—or at least undervalue—Still’s poetry can perhaps be traced back to the mixed criticism that Hounds on the Mountain received upon its publication. Two major national periodicals (Atlantic and New Republic), for instance, featured negative reviews of Still’s book; both periodicals characterized his poetic voice as monotonous, and one of these reviews chastised Hounds on the Mountain for not featuring a wider variety of conventional verse forms. Certainly, Still’s poetry little resembled the kind of poetry promoted by either of the two opposing groups then dominating the American literary scene—one group influenced by high modernism (a literary movement favoring a self-consciously sophisticated poetry), the other group governed by neo-Marxist or Socialist ideologies (which expected poets to take social and/or political stands in their poems). The aforementioned reviewers, representatives of the American literary establishment then centered in the northeastern United States and sympathetic with High Modernist aesthetics, felt obliged to distrust Still’s calm, quiet, unmannered, minimalist poetic voice and his open-hearted