The Light Is Everywhere: Appalachia Zen Poetry - Couverture souple

Depta, Victor; Pendarvis, Edwina; Smith, Larry

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1947504479 ISBN 13 : 9781947504479

Editeur : Bottom Dog Press/ Blair Mountain Press, 2025

Synopsis

A gathering of 5 veteran Appalachian poets who embrace the zen Buddhist aspects of that life. The book is the publication of two Appalachian presses. Blain Mountain Press and Bottom Dog Press. It features the work of Victor Depta. Edwina Pendarvis, Barbara Sabol, Timothy Russell, and Larry Smith.

A propos du livre

À propos des auteurs

Since we are focusing on Appalachia and Zen, to say that I am a coal-camp hillbilly is appropriate since I was born in the mountains and raised for fifteen years in the coal camps of Logan County, West Virginia, the result of which has been a lifelong hostility towards industrial capitalism, the economic exploitation of miners and the decimation of the environment. The other effect of the mountains is the Pentecostal passion for a spiritually ecstatic experience of God.Escape from that hillbilly hell-in-paradise is, of course, the military. My four years in the Navy felt like the old-fashioned Grand Tour: Imperial Beach, California; Yokohama and Fukuoka in Japan; and the Florida Keys. I think the U.S. Government lost some money on my tours of duty, but I learned a lot about Zen while in Japan, and I certainly was aesthetically educated by the beauty of the world.The other escape from poverty in the mountains is education, and I went full-on, ultimately obtaining a PhD in the American Renaissance, especially the Transcendentalism of Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau. And my years in stoned San Francisco were certainly an escape. And then, in 1969 when I was thirty in Pineknob in Raleigh County, West Virginia, I was enlightened by the knowledge that reality is a darkness of the potential creativity of anything, anywhere, particularly of the blue, spikey beauty of a thistle on a scraggly hillside.

Edwina (Eddy) Pendarvis has authored, co-authored, and edited collections of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, most of them focusing on Appalachia, a few going far afield. One of her favorite projects, published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, was a series of young-adult biographies of Nobel Prize winners in literature, including one of WV native Pearl Buck. She co-authored three books of research on gifted education; and in 2023 the Jesse Stuart Foundation published her book on development of talent in danc-Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia. Blair Mountain Press published her family memoir, Raft-Tide and Railroad, and two of her poetry collections: Like the Mountains of China and Ghost Dance Poems. Bottom Dog Press published her first poetry collection in Human Landscapes.

Larry Smith grew up along the Ohio River in the steel mill town of Mingo Junction. He worked as a newspaper boy, cook, steel mill worker, then taught high school English in Euclid, Ohio. His education came from Muskingum College, then Kent State University. For 35 years he taught writing and film at the Firelands College of Bowling Green State University in Huron, Ohio, where he and his wife Ann, a nursing professor, raised three children. He is the author of 8 previous books of poetry, 5 books of fiction, 2 literary biographies, and 2 books of Chinese Zen poetry translation. He wrote and co-produced documentary films on authors James Wright and Kenneth Patchen. In 1985 he and David Shevin co-founded Bottom Dog Press which has edited and published 220 books of fiction, poetry, and memoir. He has directed the Firelands Writing Center for 40 years. In 1980-1981 the Smith family lived in Sicily where he taught Beat literature as a Fulbright Lecturer. He and Ray McNiece co-edited America Zen: A Gathering of Contemporary Zen Poets.In 1990 Smith studied haiku and tanka with Clark Strand at Mount Tremper Zen Monastery near Woodstock, NY, and he has attended Blue Cliff Retreats with Thich Nhat Hahn. He and his wife were cofounders of Converging Paths Meditation Center in Sandusky and Huron, Ohio.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Bottom Dog Press/ Blair Mountain Press
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1947504479
• ISBN 13: 9781947504479
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 110
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible