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. . . The entire process takes only minutes, but any sentient being can deduce that the agony is so extreme as to seem to last for eternity. I have a confession to make, Bruno. I’m going to enjoy watching you cook like a pig over a . . . Continue Reading

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As a graduate student in the 1970s and college English instructor in the 1980s, I could scarcely ignore the tempestuous currents spawned by the literary and cultural movement known as Deconstruction. The brain child of contemporary French philosopher Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction challenged decades of academia’s approach to understanding literature. Deconstructionists argued that culture itself was a text. As such, the movement’s adherents assumed that . . . Continue Reading

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He didn’t know how many generations had lived in the house. All he knew was that the man and woman who’d lived there before had died from cancer and that the woman had obviously been an avid flower gardener. The evidence lay stacked in the old weather-hammered garage above whoseContinue Reading

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Thank you for joining us as we continue celebrating Appalachian poet and novelist, George Scarbrough’s birthday with part 2 of Edward Francisco‘s “Christ-Hauntedness in George Scarbrough’s Invitation to Kim.”   Christ-Hauntedness in Scarbrough’s Invitation to Kim . . . As before, the reader senses that Scarbrough’s “love of profligate /Continue Reading

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Appalachian poet and novelist George Scarbrough was born on October 20, 1915. Appalachia Bare is celebrating his birthday this week with a two-part essay written by our own Edward Francisco, titled “Christ-Hauntedness in George Scarbrough’s Invitation to Kim.” The essay first appeared in The Iron Mountain Review’s George Scarbrough IssueContinue Reading

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I met J. W. Williamson in 2000 when we were both reading papers at a literary conference at Emory and Henry University in Emory, Virginia. I’d read his 1995 book Hillbillyland: What the Movies Did to the Mountains and What the Mountains Did to the Movies, and was looking forwardContinue Reading

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For a half century Wendell Berry has been on record defending small communities and local economies, dating back to his 1977 treatise The Unsettling of America, which, as Appalachian author Wilma Dykeman once observed, deserved to unsettle America more than it did. In his roles as poet, essayist, novelist, and,Continue Reading

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A poet lived in a serpeant’s mouth where he sat and dispensed wisdom. He was not old but wept frequently. Flowers withered at his touch and dogs scratched their heads at his perplexity.  When times got hard (begging no one’s forgiveness), the poet reached into his side from which heContinue Reading