From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems by James Still (review)

accessible to the uninitiated. Not only is their "lost world" of nineteenthcentury fiddling far removed from what most of us hear on radio, recordings and at festivals today, but they were both well past their youthful prime when collectors finally were able to record them. One noticeable feature of the book are the annotations that accompany each tune. These tend to be mostly references to recorded and printed sources, but there is some anecdotal material mixed in and also commentary on variants and musical "relatedness" between tunes. While generally interesting, the annotations can be a little tedious to read in their entirety. Also, the many archival recordings cited may be difficult for the average reader to obtain. But the book is a lasting reference work after all, and it is very valuable to know where one can find other examples of these tunes. Fiddle players will have to confront the challenge of how best to deal with the "cross-tuned" pieces. "Cross-tuning" is a vernacular expression referring to the option of changing the pitch of open strings from the standard GDAE tuning to AEAE, GDAD, etc., to simplify fingering and achieve certain hallmark effects. The practice was once much more common among old time fiddlers than it is today. Titon explains that self-taught fiddlers usually "think of [musical] keys as patterns on the fingerboard"—that is, they relate to the instrument more through the physicality of finger placement than through the cerebral association of notes on a staff with corresponding pitches. Because the notation in the book presents melodies as they are intended to sound, fiddlers used to playing by positions and patterns may have to make some mental-musical adjustments in order to get the sound right in cross tuning. Obviously, no book of this sort can be exhaustive, and it wasn't feasible to include many deserving fiddlers and tunes. But hopefully, if enough people buy this collection, perhaps we could look forward to additional similar volumes. Considering that many of these musicians lived and died in their home communities with minimal recognition of their art, Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes is a most welcome tribute to them and to the extraordinary wellspring of music and lore associated with Kentucky's traditional music. —Steve Green Still, James. From the Mountain, From the Valley: New and Collected Poems. Edited by Ted Olson. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. 78 From the Mountain, From the Valley offers us three different types of account: an account of the work, an account of the writer, and an account of a world that is fast disappearing. The account of the book is by the its editor Ted Olson. In it, he makes the case that while James Still's reputation as a writer is based primarily on his prose works it is his poetry that forms "the foundation for his work in other literary genres." Olson hopes that, by presenting "all of Still's mature poetry within a single, chronologically arranged volume," the reader will discover Still's "literary voice . .. evolved through his writing of poetry." The second account given in thebookis ofthe writer,both in the sense ofbeing about him and in the sense ofbeing produced by him. Titled "A Man Singing to Himself: An Autobiographical Essay," it accords with Olson's preface in at least one significant way: both present the writer as anevolvingfigure. Stillrecounts forus the forces thatshapedhis life, from family origins in Virginia and Georgia, to his early exposure to poetry by "Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, and Keats," his graduate education at Vanderbilt, and his eventual move to Knott County, Kentucky. The loose, easy narrative acquaints us with what Still seems to have taken as the central paradox of his life, his "irremovable reputation ofbeing a hermit" and his lifelong fascination with the people around him. Though Still's poetry, his account of the world, surveys a wide field, taking us from the Appalachian wilderness to Mayan temples in Belize, its true focal point is the developing relationship between the poet and the world around him. In the earliest of his mature poems, written in the 1930s, the speaker's consciousness of himself as an outsider, as...