Posts Tagged ‘Kentucky’
Jesse Stuart’s “Hie to the Hunters”
Recently on this blog I profiled the noted Appalachian author Jesse Stuart. Stuart, born in Greenup County, Kentucky in 1906, was a prolific writer who published novels, short stories, essays, books for children and youth, and autobiography. His memoir of teaching in rural Kentucky, The Thread That Runs So True, published in 1949, has long…
Read MoreA Force of Nature: The Life and Work of Jesse Stuart
He was born in Greenup County, Kentucky, the son of poor parents who moved from one Kentucky hill farm to another, working hard to make the land pay. His father was illiterate. But he would grow up to become a prestigious and highly paid writer who traveled the world and eventually owned all the land…
Read MoreWinter in Kentucky, c. 1810
I recently finished reading Robert Penn Warren’s remarkable narrative poem Brother To Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices. The poem concerns a real incident that occurred near Paducah, Kentucky—the murder of a slave by Thomas Jefferson’s two nephews in 1811. Robert Penn Warren, who was born in Guthrie, Kentucky in 1905, is the only…
Read MorePresident Lincoln: Master of American Prose
February 12 marks the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who is not only one of our greatest Presidents—perhaps the greatest American President—but one of the great leaders in world history. Lincoln is also arguably the greatest writer among the Presidents. All of our Presidents have left behind a body of writing, usually consisting of policy…
Read MoreThomas Merton’s Christmas-themed poem “The Flight Into Egypt”
The great spiritual writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote a number of poems in connection with various liturgical days, saints, and Biblical themes and figures. Merton (1915-1968) was a member of the Trappist monastery at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky. It has been seventy years now since Merton’s first collection of poetry—Thirty…
Read MoreWendell Berry’s Elegy for John F. Kennedy: “November Twenty Six Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three.”
It is fifty-one years now since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. It was one of the greatest shocks the American people have ever experienced, one of those beautiful sunlit days like 9/11 in which everything suddenly went wrong. In the days that followed there was a massive outpouring of commemoration and…
Read MoreAutumn in the Country
“All the signs of the autumn came, the heavy plush-like asters, buckberries and frostflowers, everlasting and chicory–all the last tokens of the living year. The mockingbird would sing a few notes, reminiscent of spring after the quiet of the late summer, and on moonlight nights the cocks would crow all night long. Ellen bought a…
Read MorePoet Richard Hague To Read At Northern Kentucky University
On Thursday, October 23, 2014, noted poet Richard Hague will read from and discuss his new book of poems During The Recent Extinctions: New and Selected Poems 1984-2012 (Dos Madres Press, 2012). Hague is an award-winning poet and essayist in Cincinnati. Born and raised in Steubenville, Ohio, he has published fifteen collections of poetry, as…
Read MorePublished Eighty Years Ago: Jesse Stuart’s “Man with a bull-tongue Plow.”
Today—October 14, 2014–marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of Jesse Stuart’s rambling and powerful collection of 703 sonnets called Man with a bull-tongue Plow. Yes, you read that number correctly—703! Stuart was a tall and robust man from the hills of Kentucky who wrote like a force of nature. He was born in Greenup…
Read MoreHarlan Hatcher: Buckeye Extraordinaire.
The author Harlan Hatcher was born 116 years ago today on September 9, 1898 in Ironton, Ohio. He lived for nearly a century, dying at the age of 99 in 1998. Harlan Hatcher was a true man of letters: a novelist, editor, historian, and literary critic, as well as a teacher who became a successful…
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