#james still

[yoshimickster]

In all serious, look up Dr. James Still, he was a down to Earth man who helped everyone he could even when he was denied the right to be an MD.

[newlettersradio]

On the Podcast: Poet and Musician Ted Olson Discusses Appalachia

Ted Olson, a professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, discusses how his writing has been impacted by the region's history, literature and music. He reveals what he learned studying with poet Wendell Berry and the profound influence of editing poetry and stories by the late James Still, resulting in two Appalachian Book of the Year Awards for From the Mountain, From the Valley and The Hills Remember. He also reads from his own poetry collections Revelations and Breathing in Darkness, punctuated with music from Big Bend Killing: The Appalachian Ballad Tradition, his sixth Grammy nominee. Stream the full show on our website or sign up for the free weekly podcast via iTunes.

[davetabler]

My neighbor across the creek is already up and busy with his saw and hammer, despite it being Sunday, despite his having worked in the mines all the other six days of the week, often in water shoe-mouth deep, as he tells me, and in spite of there not being a plank requiring sawing or …

[evictedfromdreamland]

Heritage by James Still

I shall not leave these prisoning hills

Though they topple their barren heads to level earth

And the forests slide uprooted out of the sky.

Though the waters of Troublesome, of Trace Fork,

Of Sand Lick rise in a single body to glean the valleys,

To drown lush pennyroyal, to unravel rail fences;

Though the sun-ball burns its strength into the blistered rock

I cannot leave. I cannot go away.

Being of these hills, being one with the fox

Stealing into the shadows, one with the new-born foal,

The lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill,

One with the destined feet of man climbing and descending,

And one with death rising to bloom again, I cannot go.

Being of these hills I cannot pass beyond.

[americanmythology]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_TZO-oAQMM)

Kentucky writer James Still reads one of his own poems. From The United States of Poetry episode "The Land and the People."

Copyright Washington Square Arts, 1995.

[upkebooks]

Richard says:

I promise I’m excited on the inside about reading The Hills Remember by James Still!

[khatdog]

In My Dreaming

by James Still

Note from Still: "As Coleridge composed "Kubla Khan" in a dream, a dream disturbed, one of my poems came unbidden after an imagined telephone ring in the night."

Last night the telephone rang in my head, in

my sleep, in my dreaming.

You had passed from all reckoning of our days

without number,

From our knowledge and practice of love

From terrestrial sleep to infinite slumber;

The coils which bound us snapped in two,

The bowl was broken at the well,

Our sky of crystal cracked and fell,

The seeds of surfeit sprouted and grew,

In my head, in my sleep, in my dreaming.

And it was true.

And it was true.

source

[whistlefromabove]

(But it’s no use. John the Baptist stops, distracted, looking back at the Tongva Elder who continues singing The Welcoming Song.)