Another Appetite

It is April and the cold wind shears through Spring, sharp and strident, cutting away the warmth that had been nuzzling the earth. The daffodils have been shredded and the azaleas’ fragile blooms are scissored to limp bits of faded rag.

A Note On James Dickey

I found in James Dickey not only these allegedly “Southern” themes but also something else — that universal struggle between the spirit and the flesh. However grotesque his imagination was, this man, I felt, had more to say about the matter than any other living poet.

Of God And My Father

A Memoir

I sat on the couch less to read than to be enveloped in that atmosphere. I was too old, by then, to sit with him in his chair, feel the warmth of his breath on my head, smell the faint odor of his sweat, but being just a few feet away was almost as comforting.

Too Old To Rock And Roll, Too Young To Die

Mike looked at me quizzically while Greg Wells, another WQDR disc jockey (or “jock,” as they say in the business), delivered this devastating insight: “Well, you know what it is, Dave . . . You’re just getting old.”

Val Staples Enterprises Announces Distillate Of Rainbow

Distillate of Rainbow is an ancient and natural remedy for the relief of tension and nagging worries.

Shadow Dancing

When Sy and I were consoling each other about life’s turbulence, he pantomimed our boyhood baseball heroes rescuing homerun balls from going over the centerfield fence. “Catch it gracefully.” Catch this pain, frustration, hunger, craziness, gracefully.

. . . and not a drop to drink. . . .

The Cane Creek Controversy

Coy Armstrong moved to Cane Creek from Wilkes County in 1922, when he was eight years old. He has walked his land thousands of times, and probably knows Cane Creek better than anyone.

Inside Out

A Spiritual Manual For Prison Life

The anger will go through; there will be no place in you it can hang its hat. The sticky thing in you is your model of who you think you are. But if you think of yourself as a soul going to God, then other people’s criticism either of your personality or of your body has no real effect on you.

Cain’s Fate

Book Review

Cheever’s narrative details the later history. It tells the story of the wanderer, the outcast, the man cursed from the ground. It is a story not just of the fate of Cain, but also of the society which condemns him.

Journal

And when our eyes met, you said silently to me, don’t remind me, not as a reprimand but because these moments, this coming together, was a last blooming lily which I should not point at but rather unfurl my own petals in harmony with yours.

Six Stories

The life insurance salesman will be here soon. He will put it to him bluntly: he has responsibilities. In his case, there are photographs of the funeral. He is a handsome corpse. He feels flattered.

Spies Don’t Kill Each Other

Fletcher E. Driscoll felt the day getting warmer. He was in the back seat of a Land Rover, blindfolded. It must be noon, he thought, bouncing along what seemed to be a crude jungle road.

Photographs By John Toms

The photographs in this selection are available as a PDF only. Click here to download.

Drawings By Carl Harp 126-516

Being is my every breath, the truth I bathe in; Reality is my all even when it tears at me behind these walls. I will not look away, I have seen all the games, and though I am not perfect (who is?) I am not needing those things for they are not lasting.

Selected Poems

Falling

Selected Poems

[With melon and sack,]

I Want To See If Angels Come

Selected Poems