About the Book
A gathering of 5 veteran Appalachian poets who embrace the zen Buddhist aspects of that life. The book is the publication of two Appalachian presses. Blair Mountain Press and Bottom Dog Press. It features the work of Victor Depta. Edwina Pendarvis, Barbara Sabol, Timothy Russell, and Larry Smith
About the Author :
Since we are focusing on Appalachia and Zen, to say that I am a coal-camp hillbilly is appropriate since I was born in the mountains and raised for fifteen years in the coal camps of Logan County, West Virginia, the result of which has been a lifelong hostility towards industrial capitalism, the economic exploitation of miners and the decimation of the environment. The other effect of the mountains is the Pentecostal passion for a spiritually ecstatic experience of God.Escape from that hillbilly hell-in-paradise is, of course, the military. My four years in the Navy felt like the old-fashioned Grand Tour: Imperial Beach, California; Yokohama and Fukuoka in Japan; and the Florida Keys. I think the U.S. Government lost some money on my tours of duty, but I learned a lot about Zen while in Japan, and I certainly was aesthetically educated by the beauty of the world.The other escape from poverty in the mountains is education, and I went full-on, ultimately obtaining a PhD in the American Renaissance, especially the Transcendentalism of Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau. And my years in stoned San Francisco were certainly an escape. And then, in 1969 when I was thirty in Pineknob in Raleigh County, West Virginia, I was enlightened by the knowledge that reality is a darkness of the potential creativity of anything, anywhere, particularly of the blue, spikey beauty of a thistle on a scraggly hillside. Edwina (Eddy) Pendarvis has authored, co-authored, and edited collections of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, most of them focusing on Appalachia, a few going far afield. One of her favorite projects, published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, was a series of young-adult biographies of Nobel Prize winners in literature, including one of WV native Pearl Buck. She co-authored three books of research on gifted education; and in 2023 the Jesse Stuart Foundation published her book on development of talent in danc-Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia. Blair Mountain Press published her family memoir, Raft-Tide and Railroad, and two of her poetry collections: Like the Mountains of China and Ghost Dance Poems. Bottom Dog Press published her first poetry collection in Human Landscapes. Larry Smith grew up along the Ohio River in the steel mill town of Mingo Junction. He worked as a newspaper boy, cook, steel mill worker, then taught high school English in Euclid, Ohio. His education came from Muskingum College, then Kent State University. For 35 years he taught writing and film at the Firelands College of Bowling Green State University in Huron, Ohio, where he and his wife Ann, a nursing professor, raised three children. He is the author of 8 previous books of poetry, 5 books of fiction, 2 literary biographies, and 2 books of Chinese Zen poetry translation. He wrote and co-produced documentary films on authors James Wright and Kenneth Patchen. In 1985 he and David Shevin co-founded Bottom Dog Press which has edited and published 220 books of fiction, poetry, and memoir. He has directed the Firelands Writing Center for 40 years. In 1980-1981 the Smith family lived in Sicily where he taught Beat literature as a Fulbright Lecturer. He and Ray McNiece co-edited America Zen: A Gathering of Contemporary Zen Poets.In 1990 Smith studied haiku and tanka with Clark Strand at Mount Tremper Zen Monastery near Woodstock, NY, and he has attended Blue Cliff Retreats with Thich Nhat Hahn. He and his wife were cofounders of Converging Paths Meditation Center in Sandusky and Huron, Ohio. Barbara Sabol's writing is inspired by the landscape, from the mountains of western Pennsylvania where she was raised amidst the coal and steel country. She now lives in Akron, Ohio near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park whose trails she knows by heart. Barbara was named co-Ohio Poet of the Year for her book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023.) She writes both traditional long-form and short-form poetry. Her collected haiku is part of a combined book with Larry Smith titled Connections: Morning Dew: Tanka by Larry Smith and core & all: haiku and senryu (Bottom Dog Press, 2022.) Barbara's chapbook, Mapping the Borderlands: haibun and tanka prose, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She is a retired speech therapist who lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog. Timothy J. Russell (1951-2021) was raised in Follansbee, West Virginia, and spent his adult life along the Ohio River in Toronto, Ohio. He was retired from the Weirton Steel Corp. where he worked as a boiler repairman. It was in the mill that he earned the nickname 'Mad Dog' by co-workers and 'Steel Mill Poet' fondly by fellow writers, including Jim Daniels, Frank Lehner, Marc Harshman, Richard Hague, Valerie Newman, Maggie Anderon. Many of his daily happenings at the steel mill were shared in his poems as well as his experiences in nature. Tim was a veteran of the US Army (Sgt.) having served during the Vietnam Era as a Military Police Sentry Dog Handler from 1970-1972. He graduated from Madonna High School (1969) in Weirton, then earned a Bachelor's degree from West Liberty College (1977) and a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh (1979).
Review :
The Light Is Everywhere offers readers five stellar northern Appalachian poets bound by an uncommon thread, Appalachian Zen. The poets, each offering their individual twist, bring the coal and steel country alive with traditional Asian poetic forms, Appalachian storytelling poems, and everything in between. Not just mountains and streams, but workbenches, coke piles, floodwaters, cabbage soup, horseweed and the ruined but still sensitive fingers of a mechanic all approached as sacred in this remarkable and unpretentious volume of what editor/poet Larry Smith calls "lower case zen." - Pauletta Hansel, author of Will There Also Be Singing?
