Seeking a People Partnership: Eleven Speeches by Perley Ayer (review)

section 1; by the end of the poem her first husband has written from overseas asking for a divorce, evidently the man in the photo "my mother buried in a book." ("Doubled") In the wild mountain camp named Grace, the end of the war is preceded for both sisters by the loss ofloves. Yet this poem is filled with energy, challenge, the vibrant life of both sisters and their love for each other. As they learn the war is over, they seem ready to leave their losses behind and set out again on a new path. This writer, then is granted grace to reach back over time and transmute photos, facts, and memories through imagination and art into the imagined experience of this intense young woman Lois who would become his mother. The dark thread of pain that marks earlier references to death gives way here to the comic relief of Major Flora's story about stealing a woman's corpse for burial after her wake had gone on for four days. The sudden release of energy in the verse conveying the news that the war is over also tells us that the process of grieving is finished. The poet has achieved a sense of his mother as a woman very much alive, very much herself, and with it a release of creative energy. In the tradition of Milton's classic elegy Lycidas ("Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new"), the jubilation in McFee's final lines acknowledges a new beginning not only for the sisters in 1945 but also for the poet in his own time. —Grace Sears Alfred H. Perrin, editor. Seeking a People Partnership: Eleven Speeches by Perley Ayer. Berea, Kentucky: Berea College Appalachian Center, 1991. 36 pages. $2.00 postpaid. Alfred H. Perrin is a noted bibliographer who compiled lists of the Berea College collections ofAppalachian fiction, poetry, and folk songs. In addition, Perrin also compiled texts of eleven speeches by his friend Perley Ayer in a book entitled Seeking a People Partnership. The first edition of this book, published by the Council of Southern Mountains in 1969, has sold out; consequently, this second edition has now been made available. The late Perley Ayer was a sociology professor at Berea College, who described himself as a teacher of—and practitioner in—the field of social change. From 1951-1967, Perley Ayer served as executive director of the Council of the Southern Mountains, which was widely known not only for its innovative programs of education, economic development, and community action but also for its influential regional magazine Mountain Life & Work. Loyal Jones remembers how Perley Ayer revived the Council of the Southern Mountains and 69 brought it to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. "With characteristic vigor, he resurrected it, built an impressive membership, prepared it for foundationsupported projects and the government's War on Poverty," he says. In his speeches, Perley Ayer challenged his audiences to fulfill their potential. However, he maintained that the schools, with their emphasis on competition, had been negligent in developing human potential, and he told the crowds that heard him speak: "Education is not a luxury for the few but a necessity for all citizens of a free society." He frequently referred to the deplorable situation created by the government's refusal to develop the human potential of the Appalachian South. He did not hesitate to point out that in some counties one-third to one-half of the people were living on surplus commodities, while a third of those who had jobs made less than $3,000 a year, and thus many were forced to migrate to urban growth centers to find better paying jobs. He likened the economy of Appalachia to a suit of poverty with a few pockets of prosperity. In these compelling speeches from the 1960s, Perley Ayer calls for a people partnership in which the community, schools, and government all join together in developing the human potential of Appalachia. Although his dream of a people partnership has been only partly realized, his speeches have endured to challenge another generation. —Dexter Collett Mountain Jack Tales, as told and illustrated by Gail E. Haley. New York: Dutton Children's...