Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 9.06 Literature, Poetry and Song in Appalachia
Presentation #1 Title
Poetry of Earth: Robert Morgan’s Groundwork to Sustain Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Robert Morgan’s poetry functions on multiple levels; to reclaim the place of the Appalachian farm through poesis, to connect readers to these places of his past through memory, and to sustain a place in the canon for Appalachian literature. His poems form groundwork to stabilize the erosion of the mountains themselves by anchoring a poetic root system that undergirds the landscape of the literature coming out of the region. The poetry of Appalachia is so distinctly placed-based, that readers are immediately immersed in the landscape of the home place, the mountain cove, or the pasture in the valley. Morgan’s poetry directly links readers with the past through memory and provides a connection to place through the writing. It holds onto the placeness of the Appalachian mountains and slows the disappearing of a lifestyle in an environ plagued by urbanization and deforestation. Morgan’s writing liberates Appalachian literature from its chains of the stereotypes in the oppressive world outside the coves and uses the smallest of these places to construct meaning and significance, a topophilia, between his reader and his poems which actually carves out a space for Appalachia to remain.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Alana Dagenhart Sherrill grew up in the foothills of North Carolina and is an assistant professor of literature and composition at Johnson & Wales University, Charlotte.
Poetry of Earth: Robert Morgan’s Groundwork to Sustain Appalachia
Harris Hall 446
Robert Morgan’s poetry functions on multiple levels; to reclaim the place of the Appalachian farm through poesis, to connect readers to these places of his past through memory, and to sustain a place in the canon for Appalachian literature. His poems form groundwork to stabilize the erosion of the mountains themselves by anchoring a poetic root system that undergirds the landscape of the literature coming out of the region. The poetry of Appalachia is so distinctly placed-based, that readers are immediately immersed in the landscape of the home place, the mountain cove, or the pasture in the valley. Morgan’s poetry directly links readers with the past through memory and provides a connection to place through the writing. It holds onto the placeness of the Appalachian mountains and slows the disappearing of a lifestyle in an environ plagued by urbanization and deforestation. Morgan’s writing liberates Appalachian literature from its chains of the stereotypes in the oppressive world outside the coves and uses the smallest of these places to construct meaning and significance, a topophilia, between his reader and his poems which actually carves out a space for Appalachia to remain.
