Appalachian Studies

Anne Shelby makes me laugh.

Anne Shelby makes me think.

Anne Shelby makes me shake my power fist and cry out “Right on, Sister!”

And oh, how refreshing that is.

The poems in Appalachian Studies aren’t difficult. They are plain-spoken statements from a plain-spoken witty woman who is by nature a storyteller and a humorist.

Shelby is also clear-eyed, and though her poems, like her stories, tend to the folksy, there is nothing of the sentimental about them.

Appalachian Studies is a volume of poetry you can devour at a sitting.

And I did.

Nice review by Margaret Ricketts here. Says Margaret:

Like her fellow Southerners Flannery O’Connor and Molly Ivins, Shelby uses dialect to prick stereotypes like soap bubbles. You can’t have a grandbaby on this thing / without special arrangements. One spell / transformed my taters into tatters, served / me subpoenas when I ordered soupbeans.

The poem quoted is “Spell Check,” which begins

It’s handy but not much account for writing
hillbilly poems with.

If you’d like to see some sample poems see here and here. You’ll see that “hillbilly” isn’t the only stereotype she busts. She’s also hard on sexism. And ageism.

By the way, Anne has a new children’s book out: The Man Who Lived in a Hollow Tree.

And you can catch her this weekend at the Mountain Heritage Festival, along with a passel of other talented mountain writers, including Denise Giardina and Gwyn Hyman Rubio.