Mountain White: a sequence of poems
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
My current project is a sequence of poems that reflects on race and ethnicity in Appalachia by examining the “white trash” caricatures and stereotypes that have been circulated since the eighteenth century by home missionaries, educators, reformers, travel writers, and folklorists, among others. Individual poems in the sequence consider the mountain white, the clay eater, the cracker, the pine rat, the Hatfield family, Evans and Agee’s “Gudger” family, and so on. My long-term goal is to write poetry that meditates on the natural and cultural history of Appalachia, ranging in subject matter from the rise of extractive industries and the eradication of large mammals in the early nineteenth century to mountaintop removal and vernacular art in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. I grew up in West Virginia, and since then have lived near the eastern mountains (in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and now in Tennessee) whenever possible. My influences include Emma Bell Miles, Harriette Arnow, Louise McNeill, Irene McKinney, Maggie Anderson, Robert Morgan, Anne Pancake, and Denise Giardina, all of whom ponder Appalachia and respond with a bittersweet mix of lament and praise, protest and celebration.
Mountain White: a sequence of poems
My current project is a sequence of poems that reflects on race and ethnicity in Appalachia by examining the “white trash” caricatures and stereotypes that have been circulated since the eighteenth century by home missionaries, educators, reformers, travel writers, and folklorists, among others. Individual poems in the sequence consider the mountain white, the clay eater, the cracker, the pine rat, the Hatfield family, Evans and Agee’s “Gudger” family, and so on. My long-term goal is to write poetry that meditates on the natural and cultural history of Appalachia, ranging in subject matter from the rise of extractive industries and the eradication of large mammals in the early nineteenth century to mountaintop removal and vernacular art in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. I grew up in West Virginia, and since then have lived near the eastern mountains (in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and now in Tennessee) whenever possible. My influences include Emma Bell Miles, Harriette Arnow, Louise McNeill, Irene McKinney, Maggie Anderson, Robert Morgan, Anne Pancake, and Denise Giardina, all of whom ponder Appalachia and respond with a bittersweet mix of lament and praise, protest and celebration.
