"The poems in James Applewhite's accomplished new collection of verse, A History of the River, combine to present a remarkably accurate and affecting portrait of southern culture. The fields, forests, rivers and creeks of North Carolina form the geography of Applewhite's meditations on a way of life driven by change yet rooted in tradition." "In poems of quiet authority Applewhite recalls the men and women - his forebears - who settled this part of the country, living in squared log cabins and timber-framed houses, tilling the soil with mule-drawn plows, treating illness and disease with folk remedies, leading lives defined by hardship but enhanced by the sharing of common bonds. Applewhite also writes of the ways in which the advent of technology - the inexorable stream of automobiles, tractors, electric power lines, and television sets - subtly reshaped the lives of farming families, sometimes digging a gulf between generations. In "A Wilson County Farmer" a middle-aged tobacco planter stands before his house at dusk while, inside, his wife and daughter-in-law are lit by the "television's phosphorescent glow." Life is easier now, he reflects, but less certain and more lonely." "These poems turn on the connection between father and son, mother and daughter, the hard-won passing on of identity between figures standing in different social and psychological worlds. Drawing on the wellsprings of memory and the South's strong tradition of oral history, Applewhite in this book exemplifies what language can do, conveying rich and meaningful content in a voice warm with understanding."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved