"Home Place" has been described by former Kentucky Poet Laureate Richard Taylor as "a fine narrative poem celebrating the rural life in the understated style of Robert Frost, Frost with less irony and more heart." It is a dialogue in verse between a woman who moves to the country to find a new life, and the farmer who in time becomes more than a neighbor, celebrating the redemptive power of nature and the unexpected possibility of love. 
Of the balance of the poems in the book, editor Larry Moore writes "This is the sort of poetry you get from a woman who has gotten up and gone to work, cared for a child (and still been a child herself to her parents, paid the bills, read serious books, thought serious thoughts, and risked love and rejection, all between rising and resting in a typical day - that is, if the woman is also a skilled practitioner of weaving experience into language."

Home Place and Other Poems

Potter, Sheila Bucy

Broadstone Books

This is a book that might well begin, "Once upon a time… and a place." The time, 1967 and 1968, a period of now mythic cultural significance; the place, central Kentucky, from all appearances far from the epicenters of that cultural upheaval. Yet it was then and there in that other, less centralized community, that Jonathan Greene, a young poet and fledgling publisher from New York City by way of California, met one of the world’s most famous and public hermits, Thomas Merton. The result was the tragically brief friendship and literary collaboration that is celebrated in this volume. 
Greene’s introductory memoir sets the scene, describing the unexpectedly rich intellectual and artistic milieu out in the "hinterland" of Kentucky where he was introduced to Merton through mutual friends. Two brief essays on Merton provide further context for the letters that follow, and demonstrate both the breadth of Merton’s literary interests and the depth of Greene’s knowledge of his friend’s writings. Their letters, all too few, coincided with the limited run of Merton’s literary magazine, Monks Pond, and his exchange with Greene (then publishing his own journal, Gnomon) reveals two deeply erudite and abundantly witty minds at work with the earnest joy of language. The longing of the reader that this collaboration might have lasted for many more years is underscored by the poignancy of Greene’s elegiac poem that closes the volume. 
Both Greene and Merton have been hermits in their respective fashions, yet both in finding their footing away from the larger world found that their feet were nevertheless on the pathway connecting them to that world, engaging them in the life of the mind and of the spirit. Their words, surviving the silence of decades, are indeed all the better for it.

On the Banks of Monks Pond: The Thomas Merton/Jonathan Greene Correspondence

Literature & Fiction

MERTON, THOMAS

Greene, Jonathan

Essays & Correspondence

This major retrospective of the poetry of Appalachian author and songwriter Steven R. Cope includes essentially all of his verse from two decades not previously published in book form. Here we catch not only a glimpse of Furrbawl, the forest gnome who is the poet's primordial alter ego, but many other such visions, mysterious, exotic, even disturbing, lurking in the ordinary, conducting us on a journey across twenty years rich in poetic imagination and observation, through wonder and humor and despair and hope, and through Cope's own evolution as a poet. Piercingly original, The Furrbawl Poems is a necessary addition to the annals of contemporary literature.

The Furrbawl Poems: Uncollected Poems 1973-1993

Steven R. Cope

This major retrospective of the poetry of Appalachian author and songwriter Steven R. Cope includes essentially all of his verse from two decades not previously published in book form.  Here we catch not only a glimpse of Furrbawl, the forest gnome who is the poet’s primordial alter ego, but many other such visions, mysterious, exotic, even disturbing, lurking in the ordinary, conducting us on a journey across twenty years rich in poetic imagination and observation, through wonder and humor and despair and hope, and through Cope’s own evolution as a poet.  Piercingly original, ^IThe Furrbawl Poems^R is a necessary addition to the annals of contemporary literature.

The Furrbawl Poems: Uncollected Poems, 1973-1993

For 500 years teachers and scholars have commended the practice of recording "commonplaces" -  that is, striking and noteworthy phrases encountered while reading - for later reference.  Few in recent times have taken this advice with such good effect as Jonathan Greene.  A poet, publisher, book designer and translator, Greene is foremost a reader of vast range and expansive curiosity.  The fruits of over forty years of reading with pen in hand are collected here for the enlightenment and delight of his fellow readers.  Ancient Chinese sages mingle with modern jazz masters, Yogi Berra meets Einstein, and the wisdom (and wit) of great minds known and unknown is on parade. In the end, this collection of such seemingly disparate thinkers and themes coalesces into an original work in its own right, an intellectual and artistic portrait of Greene himself, offering new and deeper insights into the mind and heart behind his many volumes of poetry.

Gists, Orts, Shards: A Commonplace Book

Jonathan Greene

In this meditation on the poetry of Thomas Merton, fellow poet Frederick Smock considers how Merton's poetry - perhaps the least-known of his writings - was nevertheless an integral component of his work for peace. But as the term meditation suggests, Smock's examination of the poetry serves as a point of entry into a far broader inquiry, not only into Merton's life and work, but into the necessary engagement of other poets in the work for peace, and into Smock's own development as an artist and a man confronting the world.

Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton

Frederick Smock

Religion & Spirituality

Through the words of the imaginary (but very authentic) Sister Jessie, the lives of the Shakers of the Pleasant Hill community in 19th century Kentucky are revealed in rich detail, humorous and poignant, spiritual and oh so human. Based on extensive historical research and chronicling the real people and events that shaped this community, this book is especially noteworthy for its focus on the largely undocumented lives of black Shakers. But most of all, it is great narrative poetry, the perfect medium for these voices to speak across the years to modern listeners.

Pretty Mother's Home: A Shakeress Daybook

Vickie Cimprich

Poetry

In November 1960 the noted scholar of Shaker life and craft, Edward Deming Andrews, wrote to Thomas Merton offering assistance with a book on the religion of the Shakers that he had heard Merton was planning. Though nothing came of that book, the ensuing correspondence between Merton and Andrews, and after Andrews' death in 1964 with his widow and collaborator Faith, itself became a spirited and spiritual examination and celebration of the lives and legacy of the Shakers. 
 Here for the first time, Dr. Paul M. Pearson introduces and brings together both sides of this correspondence, allowing the reader to delight in both the interplay of ideas and inspiration, and the growth of sincere affection, that occurred between Merton and the Andrews through their shared vocation. 
 The correspondence is supplemented by a selection of Merton's photographs of the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Kentucky, newly identified with captions supplied by Pleasant Hill Curator Larrie S. Curry. A review of the Andrews' Shaker Furniture by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy concludes the volume. Merton once observed, "The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it." To read these letters is to experience a meeting of angels, coming to rest for a moment in the contemplation of the simple, but to this day challenging, gifts of the Shakers. 
 In A Meeting of Angels Dr. Paul Pearson has made available both sides of the correspondence between Merton and a reknowned authority on the Shakers. Dr. Pearson's brief and very helpful introduction and his judicious use of footnotes display the careful scholarship we are accustomed to expect from him. --William H. Shannon, Founding President of the International Thomas Merton Society 
 In this fascinating exchange of letters the reader is given an example of Merton's empathy with his correspondents and his great respect for the Shaker tradition which had so many similarities with the best of the Cistercian spirit. How much more is seen when both sides of the correspondence are made available. --Brother Patrick Hart, OCSO

A Meeting of Angels: The Correspondence of Thomas Merton with Edward Deming & Faith Andrews

Paul M. Pearson

In this new collection of his poetry written since 2004, Greene does indeed explore those matters closest to his heart, both the personal and, increasingly, the social and political. Ranging over subjects light and profound, at times amused and at others outraged, he is everywhere intensely alive to the experience of life itself, and all the reasons, as he says at one point, to love this world. In verse that is spare but never sparse, he opens our hearts along with his own.

Heart Matters

In this latest collection of his poetry, award-winning author Robert Morgan continues his exploration and celebration of the culture and curiosities of his native Appalachia.

October Crossing

Robert Morgan

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