Celebrating 25 Years of the North Carolina Literary Review
Two word lines shape the poem into a visual diagram of headstones lining a cemetery:
Mountain Graveyard stone notes slate tales sacred cedars heart earth asleep please hated death
“Mountain Graveyard” echoes “Sigodlin” through its formal structure. Both poems express mysteries beyond human understanding, a constant theme in Morgan’s work, and both dramatize the “power whose center is everywhere.” In “Mountain Graveyard,” the center holds in the vertical span of white space despite several leanings “off-plumb” in the right column. The sparse use of words with their carefully rendered sound chimes (“stone”
and “note,” “slate” and tales”) bridge the gap and create a lattice effect where natural world and human body, oral and inscribed speech, metaphor and emotion, lead to the enigmatic statement of the last lines’ appeal (“asleep please”) and condemnation (“hated death”). Many of the poems in Book Two continue Morgan’s probing into objects and their invisible energies (“Jugs in the Smokehouse,” “Whiskey Tree,” and “Grandma’s Bureau”), but the section is notable for its inclusion of longer poems that treat historical, cultural, and familial subjects. Narrative thrusts are shaped to poetic form in “Sydney Lanier Dies at Tryon 1881,” “Ninety-Six Line,” and “The Body of Elisha Mitchell” and break the book’s pattern of single page poems. The longest poem in Sigodlin is the penultimate one,
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“The Road from Elmira,” Morgan’s memory tale of his father’s journey from the mountains to the piedmont to sell his wares “for Christmas cash.” The poem runs three pages and displays the most irregular syllabic rhythms in the collection, eschewing formal pattern for jagged free verse thrusts that mimic the steep and perilous trail through outcrops and juts of mountain wilderness. “The Road to Elmira” resonates with specificity of place and emphasizes the hard work of farm life, a theme Morgan has pursued throughout his career. Journeys in Morgan’s poetry run over land, space, time, and mind. In the decades-long tracking of Morgan’s poetry, Sigodlin remains pivotal and indispensible, launching a fifteen-year stretch that Jesse Graves has called Morgan’s “major phase.” For those interested in the trip, Sigodlin is a perfect spot to join the ride. n
PHOTOGRAPH BY LENARD D. MOORE
ANTHONY ABBOTT RECEIVES THE 2015 NORTH CAROLINA AWARD FOR LITERATURE Davidson College poet/professor Anthony S. Abbott received the 2015 North Carolina Award for Literature. The North Carolina Awards are the highest civilian awards given by the state. Abbott received his BA from Princeton University, graduating Magna Cum Laude, and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels. He has taught at Davidson College since 1964, was named Charles A. Dana Professor of English in 1990, and served as chair of the English Department from 1989 to 1996. He has also taught Sunday School at Davidson College Presbyterian Church for over fifty years. n
ABOVE Anthony Abbott with his former student
Staley Jordan Nance (Davidson College Class of 1977) at the North Carolina Awards ceremony, Durham, 12 Nov. 2015