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NORTH CAROLINA L ITE R A R Y RE V IE W O N L INE
And in “Myopia,” the speaker finds his dead great-grandmother’s eyeglasses, which allow him to see the world more clearly. Seeing has become a waking. Death, though, has a presence even in the early poems of the book. The second section begins and ends with light, the first poem being about a flame handed down from generation to generation, even when the family migrated across the Atlantic and then from one state to another – and the refusal by the heir of the flame to leave when the valley is to be flooded by a dam: “. . . until / that fire left with him, the truck’s / windows left up less wind still / the pail of sparks his lap held.” With similar passion in the section’s last poem, “Woman Among
Lightning: Catawba County Fair, 1962,” a farmwife riding a Ferris wheel “dredging buckets of darkness / out of the sky” is willing to risk the dangers of a storm to feel that freedom up in the air “far from earth as a fistful / of hard-earned quarters can take her.” The poems in this section move from observations – about such subjects as pocketknives, car tags, and tobacco barns – to narratives about women in circumstances of hardship and yearning. Poems of death and hard times are most prevalent in the third and fourth sections. Included is an elegy for musician Merle Watson (distant kin of the poet), who died in a tractor accident in 1985. Deaths by childbirth, drowning, hunting accident, and war are some of the tragedies that Rash tells of when his
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narrative talents as a fiction writer serve him especially well. In the book’s longest poem, “Three A.M. and the Stars Were Out,” spoken in the voice of an old veterinarian, Rash is able to take both a narrative and meditative slant, revealing not just the story of the veterinarian but of the hard times of poor farmers as well, men who, in an attempt to save the fee, often wait too late to call the vet. Welsh culture begins the book’s fourth section with the poem “Genealogy,” which ends with amazing sound play on the poet’s Welsh surname Rash: “ . . . a name carried far / only in the wind’s harsh sibilance, / its branch-lashing rattle and rush.” That poem is followed by “Rhiannon,” whose story comes
Ron Rash, Childhood Friend, runner, and . . . REcipient of the 2011 North Carolina Award for Literature by Cindy Putnam-Evans Cindy Putnam-Evans, Associate Dean for Research in ECU’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, was asked to introduce her lifelong friend Ron Rash before his keynote speech at the 8th Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming in Greenville, 24 Sept. 2011. Hearing of Rash’s most recent honor, NCLR asked Putnam-Evans to share her remarks for a different kind of introduction to the 2011 North Carolina Award recipient. See also the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources press release.
For those of you who know me, you might be wondering why I have been given the honor of introducing our special guest, Ron Rash, the Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina. Certainly, as a biologist, I have a deep love of and respect for the natural world, and human interaction with the environment is the theme for this year’s homecoming and a theme that permeates Ron’s writing. But that’s not why. And I’m certainly not up here because I know much about literary technique. The reason I’m here is because I have known Ron Rash my entire life. At least, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Ron and his family. We grew up together in our hometown, Boiling Springs, NC; we spent time together; and over the years, we have followed each other’s careers with great interest and, dare I say, pride.
I thought I would take this opportunity, if you will indulge me, to reminisce briefly about our younger days and tell you a couple of things I remember best about Ron. You may not know this, but Ron was an exceptional athlete in his younger days. He ran track in high school and college and was mostly a middledistance runner. I have some very fond memories of going to track meets to watch Ron run. At this time, running was a main focus of his life, perhaps, one might say an obsession. Another thing you might not know about Ron is that he didn’t get his driver’s license until he was nineteen. You see, he didn’t need to drive because he ran everywhere he went. It was a rare day in Boiling Springs that you didn’t see Ron somewhere around town – running. And he ran a lot – sometimes fifty, eighty, or more miles a week – as part of his training. I remember that sometimes he even ran to school, which was about five miles from his house. Looking back, I think this obsession with running illustrated two things about Ron that I’ve known for a long time: he is dedicated to and passionate about those things that are important to him. And this same dedication and passion that he had for running we now see