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"finding" only proves to sethim on another search for more thanliteral "pine boards" painted "robin's egg blue." His search turns inward, nostalgically aware of the box as a metaphor. He longs for his boyhood innocence, for his earlier self, "that man who thought he could stay inside/ forever, who believed he would never/ outgrow such beauty, that he could always/ master any space shaped by his own hand." Ultimately these poems address the heart of Modernism because DeFoe as any modern poet is attempting to "master" experience by his own attention to it. Like Wallace Stevens, DeFoe's central goal is to transcend daily ritual, to comprehend people and place by re-ordering them through the lens of his own keen perception. Indeed, DeFoe's bird imagery and poem "Sunday Morning: Mad for the Dazzle of New Data, I Skip Church and Surf the Net" may well be seen as an homage to Steven's "Sunday Morning." Attending to his world—whether it be Appalachia, Bulgaria, Oklahoma, his attic, his porch—DeFoe defines the urgency of transfiguration. The final lines of the title poem perhaps speak best the quality and theme of music in DeFoe's book, his bird imagery, and his focus upon the power of individual imagination to remake any time and place in the eye of the beholder: Walk into a jubilee, a glee of wings. Songs rising, spilling through the mist, Saying to this little place, I belong. Trill, trill the sun across the lawns, Shimmering day, day, day. Day anointed In pure song, in pure song, in pure, pure song. —Susan O'Dell Underwood Silas House. A Parchment of Leaves. Algonquin Books, 2002. 278 pages. $23.95 Silas House has done it again. His second novel, A Parchment ofLeaves, like his debut, Clay's Quilt, paints a picture of Appalachia that is beautiful and true to life. Though A Parchment of Leaves differs from Clay's Quilt greatly, most notably in that it is historical fiction and is written from a woman's point of view, the two novels share common strengths. House's characters in both novels are typically Appalachian in many ways, but not stereotypically Appalachian. Their pride is strong, and they show a deep devotion to family and to their 91 community. But you won't find any fantastic Appalachian images or cliqued hillbilly characters in this novel. Appalachia is ever-present in the novel, but A Parchment ofLeaves has its own identity. The result is a graceful, moving and accessible novel. The story is of Vine, a beautiful, mysterious Cherokee woman who sees both darkness and light in her future. Vine leaves her Cherokee people to marry Saul, a local white man, and begins a life with him farming and raising a family on God's Creek in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Modeled in part after House's own great-grandmother, Vine is a woman of integrity and strength. She triumphs during hardships, which she faces often. Vine deals with local racial prejudice and becomes part of her husband's family and culture while still hanging onto her Cherokee ways. Vine becomes the center of support for the local women who keep the community running while the men are overseas during World War I. Ultimately, Vine must also deal with the loss of her own Cherokee family when they are forced to leave the area. The greatest hardship Vine faces in the novel however, is deeply personal. Her gift for intuition and insight into the people around her give her strength to carry on. Like Clay's Quilt, the prose in A Parchment of Leaves reads like poetry with a wealth of similes and figurative language: "His face was as pale as the beans she had held in her hand, and his face was long with fear." Music plays a big role in the novel, and lyrics of songs from the period are woven through the prose. Characters play "Little Sunshine" on the banjo and sing many old songs. The beauty of the region shines in the novel. On a walk during springtime Vine sees trout lilies, wild geraniums and trilliums of all kinds, and she notices the mountainside...

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