New Appalachian Books

New Appalachian Books by George Brosi Anderson, Maggie. Cold Comfort. Pittsburgh: University ofPittsburghPress, 1986. 67 pages. Hardback in dust jacket, $15.95; trade paperback. $7.95. Although Maggie Anderson was bom and raised in New York City, much of the poetry in this, her second collection, harks backto herWest Virginia roots. She says ofthese poems, "I like to think I have made poems which are both intelligent and common; both ordinary and somehow erudite; both comfortable with dailiness and itching with ambition." Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems: 1957-1982. San Francisco: North Point Press, known to have been released in trade paperback in 1987, but printed with the same plates as the hardback and thus dated 1985. 268 pages. Trade paperback. $8.50. "This volume contains all of my poems, so far published in books, that I care to have reread___ A few ofthe poems here, some newly titled, were published previously as parts of longer poems. Some of the longer poems have been shortened. In some poems I have made deletions and other changes, usually small," writes Berry in an "Author's Note." Of this volume, the Baltimore Sun wrote: "For all his earthiness, Mr. Berry is a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau. . . . Ranging from the 'known' to the 'celestial,' from rich concreteness to prophetical intonations, Mr. Berry's Collected Poems establishes him as a major poet of our time." Berry lives and farms on the Kentucky River near where it empties into the Ohio. Bittinger, Billy. The Good Time Gospel Boys. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. 280 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $15.95. "You have a winner in this one; I am just overwhelmed. . . . It's a cauldron of a book, teeming with people believing what they wish to believe about the truths that haunt them, going through life looking on the bright side of hell. Several of the scenes left me stunned and blinking, unable to believe I had read what I had read. The author stalks the reader until she has him in her sights, then lets him have it with both barrels. . . . Bittinger's ear is perfect." —Florence King. Set in the Kentucky hills and written by a long-time resident of the Frankfort, Kentucky, area. Cash, June Carter.FromtheHeart. NewYork: PrenticeHallPress, 1987. 197 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $12.95. "An eccentric, but winning, memoir. ... In some 40 vignettes with plenty ofphotos, she tells her story episodically, but with a grass-roots poetry and candor." —Kirkus Reviews. 91 Perhaps it is revealing that very little of this book deals with June Carter Cash's earliest years inthemountains ofsouthwest Virginiaorwithherparents' fame as pioneers incountry music. Chappell, Fred. The Fred Chappell Reader. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. 491 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $22.95. "Anybody who knows anything about Southern writing knows that Fred Chappell is our resident genius, our shining light, the one truly great writer we have among us. I hope this collection won't make him so famous it messes him up, or slows him down. I want him to get on with it."—Lee Smith. ". . . the arrival ofthis handy reader at once renders severely culpable any continued ignorance of a national treasure." —Reynolds Price. Chappell is a native of Canton, North Carolina, and sets most of his works in Western North Carolina. This collection includes excerpts from four novels, and Dagan in its entirety, as well as six previously-collected and two uncollected stories, and poems from four different collections. Feelings ofJonesborough. Text by Becky Poteat Sims. Photographs by William E. Kennedy. Jonesborough, Tennessee: self-published. 52 unnumbered pages. Hardback issued without jacket. $15.00. A pleasant remembrance for any reader who has encountered Tennessee's oldest town. The Foxßre Book of Wine Making. Student editors: Lori Gillespie, Kelly Shropshire, and Allison Adams. Staff Coordinators: Hilton Smith and Margie Bennett. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1987. 150 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $17.95. Trade paperback. $9.95. Recipes and reminiscences gathered and presented in the inimitable Foxfire tradition by high school students in the North Georgia mountains. Laughter inAppalachia: A Festival ofSouthernMountain Humor. Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler...