Appalachian Studies: Poems, and: Can a Democrat get into Heaven? Politics, Religion & Other Things You Ain't Supposed to Talk About (review)

Anne Shelby. Appalachian Studies: Poems. Nicholasville, KY: Wind Publications, 2006. 103 pages. Trade paperback. $15.00. —. Can a Democratgetinto Heaven? Politics, Religion & Other Things YouAin't Supposed to TalkAbout. Louisville, KY: MOTES/EvaMedia, 2006. 228 pages. Trade paperback. $16.98. American poet Miller Williams begins his new book of essays on poetry, Making a Poem, with this observation: "We live in a haunted world. We are surrounded by ghosts." One of Anne Shelby's two new books, a full-length collection of poems, begins the same way, in a haunted world where the poet is surrounded by "the crowds, forever poorly dressed, / always crossing / the Atlantic in crowded boats." And this crowd of ghosts is particular, too: They have to have shuck beans wherever they are, and redeye gravy. We can't even run up to the county seat without dragging an enormous trunk of old pictures, and all that slow, mournful singing . . . "Now what / am I supposed to do with that?" the poet asks. But it's a rhetorical question, of course, because Kentucky author Anne Shelby has made ghost hunting her life's work. ThisisnottosaythatShelby—poet,journalist, songwriter,storyteller, scholar, teacher and playwright—is obsessed withmatters of the occult, running down haints, or trailing after her long-dead Clay County, Kentucky relatives. Ancestors and ghosts of the past are important to Shelby, but she's not stuck there, offering us the sentimental dribble of mossy fence posts or a venerable longing for the good old days. Eastern Kentucky, she reminds us in one poem, "ain't / the promised land. / There's been snakes in the garden / right along." Shelby's two new collections of poems and newspaper columns illuminate a past that clearly shapes her present point of view. While honoring a childhood surrounded by Kentucky mountains, family stories, a great grandmother who smoked a pipe with "a copy of Jane Austen onher lap" and grandparents who were farmers/storekeepers, Shelby is quite forward-thinking. As poet andjournalist she often takes on the same controversial subjects: mountaintop removal mining, the war in Iraq, national and local politics, hillbilly heroin and meth labs, 90 domestic abuse and the subjugation of women in religion and society. For instance, her newspaper column, titled "AWoman's Place," reports her witnessing a man speaking out in a church meeting about why women should not serve on church committees. "[I]t was against the Bible, he said, and it was untelling what Old Testament-type plagues might be unleashed if a woman was to serve on a committee." Her persuasive arguments against this position are clever, precise and Biblically based. She offers the Apostle Paul contradicting himself about women talking in church, noting that in one epistle he wrote that women will pray and prophesy. "You can pray silently," Shelby quips, "but to prophesy you just about have to open your mouth." Her poem, "Heart of the World," records the voices of her Teges Creek neighbors, and one speaker makes a similar argument: The Bible says a woman should keep silent in the church and in all things submit unto her husband. But I've seen how some husbands does. There's got to be a loophole somewhere. Cultural differences and misconceptions, however, are the main topics that frame Shelby's world view and provide most of the artistic inspiration in both of these collections. She counters stereotyping with biting wit and wisdom as she fights the wrong-headed notions people inside and outside the region still hold about Appalachians in general andeasternKentuckiansinparticular—TegesCreek,Kentucky,residents to be even more particular. Often she assumes an Appalachian literary persona, a speaker with a droll, direct, distinctly mountain voice. The title poem from her poetry collection plays on the differences between people who study the region and people who live in the region. In "Appalachian Studies" the scholars propose "a large-scale multi-faceted / data-intensive resource-exhaustive / longitudinal interdisciplinaryassessment" touncoverthe "factorsthatinconjunction tended to contribute / to a deviant oil to water ratio / on Teges Creek, Kentucky, in February 1983." But Shelby's persona knows better: Well what it was they was drilling up at Virgil's and the well blew up. And the creek turned yaller. And...