Sherry Chandler » Mason on Manning
Mason on Manning
The new Oxford American is out. It’s the “Winter Reading Issue,” a little late around here maybe, but chock full of goodness nonetheless.
One article is called “The OA Forum: Emerging Southern Writers – wherein some literary heavyweights pick their favorite up-and-comers (Part One).” In this feature, Bobbie Ann Mason passes the sceptre on to Maurice Manning thus:
Maurice Manning is a wry skeptic with a streak of romanticism. In his work, each iota and instant matters. But if there is one fact about Maurice (pronounced “Morris”) Manning that is essential to know, it is that his heart is in Kentucky. It is the landscape in his mind, he says. This does not make him a mere regionalist. Kentucky, a border state, is a land of contrast and ambiguities he finds suited to his poetry…”
— from Bobbie Ann Mason in The Oxford American, Winter 2006.
Some of my readers may be interested to know that Ron Rash also gets a nod (from Dorothy Allison).
Only one woman among the ten up-and-comers: the poet Natasha Tretheway.
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