Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women's Poetry (review)

Felicia Mitchell, ed. Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women's Poetry. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002. 332 pages. $35.00. In her second edited book, poet, teacher, and scholar Felicia Mitchell challenges the traditional stereotype of Appalachia as a "monochromatic subculture within white America" that lacks the ironies, paradoxes, and pluralities depicted in other regional and minority literatures of the United States (xiii). In doing so, she collects poems by twenty female writers who not only help to broaden the academically conservative notion of what constitutes "Appalachian Literature" but who also help to expand the racial realities of the true "Appalachian" experience. To achieve her aim, Mitchell includes poems by such untraditional and un-anthologized figures as Nikki Giovanni, an African-American poet who established herself as a central figure in the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s; Marilou Awiakta, a poet of Irish and Cherokee ancestry who often explores the problems of her split identity in prose poem form; and doris davenport, a lesbian performance artist who writes of the black woman's experiences as a part of double-marginalized "Affrilachia." In Her Words, Mitchell uses these poets, and such others as Maggie Anderson, Lou V. Crabtree, Leatha Kendrick, George Ella Lyon, Irene McKinney, and Bennie Lee Sinclair, to represent the diversity of Appalachian writing and to show the growing, important number of female voices in contemporary Appalachian Literature. In this, the editor more than fulfills her aim. This book's main problem, however, lies in its format. Mitchell collects only two poems by each of the twenty poets represented and follows these with one critical essay that attempts to fill in the gaps of each poet's life and work for the less knowledgeable reader. Her Words is neither a true anthology nor an actual book of criticism. Its problematic format will raise a number of nagging questions for expectant readers. In her introduction, Mitchell never makes clear her criteria for inclusion. Readers may well wonder, "where are Lynn Emanuel, Llewellyn McKernan, Glenis Redmond, and Crystal Wilkinson?" Why did Mitchell exclude these important, exciting, and vibrant poets? She never answers this question. Readers will also ask why Mitchell chose to collect specific poems over others. Mitchell's editorial policy of "two poems per poet" in no way gives us a clear view of Giovanni's major works and themes or her 86 development as a poet. Although Virginia C. Fowler's accompanying essay on Giovanni does an adequate job of painting a picture of her career, readers will still feel unsatisfied and unsatiated; they will want more. A similar problem occurs with Mitchell's representation of Marilou Awiakta. Even though Grace Toney Edwards recognizes Awiakta as a "pioneer" of the prose poem (20), Mitchell includes no such poems by this groundbreaking poet in her book, which is as equally troubling. Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women's Poetry is not intended for the reader uninitiated to Appalachian writing. Instead, it is meant for an audience of academics, urging them to reconsider what is included in "Appalachian Literature" anthologies. Despite its flaws, which will keep it from a large readership, Her Words abounds in heuristic value. I urge all teachers, professors, scholars and critics of Appalachian Literature to read it and heed Mitchell's call. —Shawn Holliday Steven P. Cope. In Killdeer's Field. Wind Publishers, 2001. 116 pages. $12.00. Sassafras. Wind, 2002. 228 pages. $15.00. Steven P. Cope's recently published book of poems, In Killdeer's Field, begins with a quotation from Jack London that includes the sentence, "...language did not grow fast in those days." A poem appearing early in this stunning collection, "Appalachee," contains the lines, ...and every thought becomes one thought and that the thought of the earth— 87 ...