Lee Pennington

Songs of Bloody Harlan

Herausgeber: Baker, Jill Withrow

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In the 1960's, after graduation from Berea, Lee Pennington went to Harlan County to teach poetry to Kentucky Community College students. Under his tutelage, they published four books of poetry, Spirit Hollow, Thirteen, The Long Way Home and Tomorrow's People. It was this last book that got him in trouble, as the students were honest and frank about their locale, religion and relationships, and local authorities took offense. So much so that a price was put on Pennington's head and he had to leave with armed guards to protect him. This, of course, made national news and he was asked to speak all over the United States. It was not the students or the population of Harlan County who hated Pennington, but the establishment, the executives, the law-enforcers and managers who disapproved of his freedom and honesty. As Jean W. Ross writes in the DLB Yearbook, "the students' work was in part critical of strip-mining, traditional religious teaching, and the hypocrisy of authority." She writes of Lee's subsequent book on the subject, Songs of Bloody Harlan,, published first in North American Mentor (Summer 1971), and in book form in 1975, is Pennington's toughly realistic but ultimately loving tribute to the region that had driven him out in 1967. He wrote of the poetry's genesis, "For two years following my experience in Harlan County, I didn't say anything. But a poet doesn't have that choice either. . . . Songs of Bloody Harlan is my comment." (Jean W. Ross, Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1982, p. 335) Pennington's book, Songs of Bloody Harlan was one of his early publications, with a small edition of 100 printed, in 1975. Its popularity grew until it became very valuable, with a high price of $2,500 listed for one available on Amazon in 2018. This edition fulfills many people's desire to own a copy of this rare book, and it deserves reprinting so that all may partake of the experience Pennington lived, with all of it beauty, love and agony.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Winchester Cottage Print
• Seitenzahl: 94
• Erscheinungstermin: 29. März 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 286mm x 221mm x 10mm
• Gewicht: 522g
• ISBN-13: 9780981844275
• ISBN-10: 0981844278
• Artikelnr.: 56506276

Autorenporträt

Pennington, who grew up in Greenup County, Kentucky, is the author of nine other books of poetry including: Scenes from a Southern Road, April Poems, Songs of Bloody Harlan, I Knew a Woman and Thigmotropism. Appalachian Newground was released in April of this year and was entered for nomination for the Pulitzer by the publisher. This is Pennington's third nomination for the prize in poetry as his I Knew a Woman and Thigmotropism were previously nominated for the Pulitzer in 1977 and 1993. Pennington's life-long love-affair with writing all started in a one-room schoolhouse with the Farnham family and a row of strawberries. "When I was in the fourth grade, I went to school out in a little one-room schoolhouse on White Oak," said Pennington. "We had this history book, it was structured like a historical novel. It was about the Farnham family and it went from the settlement of the country until the late 1800s. I was disappointed that this family wasn't brought into the 20th century, so I wrote about 80 pages, adding two or three more generations to bring them up to the time that I was in school, that's the first writing I remember doing." And he never stopped. "I was in high school at McKell in 1957, the same time that Jesse Stuart was principal. Jesse came over to the Portsmouth Times and said, 'why don't you let one of our high school students report McKell news?' and they said they'd be happy to if he had someone in mind. So Jesse came back to school and said to me, 'you're our reporter.'" Pennington wrote various articles for the Daily Times, primarily sports, during his junior and senior years of high school, earning himself $3 per article. "My mother and father had a little farm, and one of the things that we raised were strawberries. My parents always gave me a row and the money that came in from that row was mine to keep," explained Lee. "When I got my first check from the Times, I went to Jesse all excited because the writing made me more money than my row of strawberries. So I told Jesse, 'I've made more money writing than I have farming,' so I've decided to become a writer rather than a farmer." After graduating from high school, Pennington attended Berea College and went on to graduate school at the University of Iowa. In 1984, State Legislature named him the Poet Laureate of Kentucky. Pennington was a professor of English at the University of Kentucky Jefferson Community College, teaching creative writing and English for 34 years until he retired in 1999. He also taught at several other schools and universities including poetry at the Jesse Stuart Creative Writing Workshop at Murray State University for 10 summers.