On the Selection  ix

I  

State Road 134  3

My Grandfather's Funeral  4

Driving Through a Country America  6

The Sunplane  7

Leaf Mirrors  8

William Blackburn, Riding Westward  9

Looking for a Home in the South  11

Discardings  12

Visit with Artina  13

A Kid at the County Fair  15

Revisitings  16

Zeppelin Fantasy  17

Bordering Manuscript  18

To Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in Exile  19

War Summer  20

A Southern Elegy  21

II  

The Capsized Boat  25

On the Homefront  26

A Vigil  27

A Garden's Season  28

Iron River  29

With Darkening Foliage  30

Diamond of Shadow  31

A Forge of Words  32

Combat Station  33

To Forgive this Inheritance  34

Images, Burning  35

A Minister, Crippled  36

Keeper of the Dragon's Teeth  37

Boundary Stones  38

III  

Tobacco Men  41

Drinking Music  42

Building in the Country  43

Roadside Notes in Ragged Hand  44

Water  46

Blood Ties: For Jan  47

Pamlico River  48

January Farmhouse  49

White Lake  50

Firewood  51

Some Words for Fall  53

From as Far Away as Dying  54

The Mary Tapes  55

IV  

Iron Age Flying  65

English Church Towers  68

Evening in Bath  69

Royal Hospital  70

Beginning with Egypt (The British Museum)  71

Foreseeing the Journey  72

V  

Jonquils  77

Collards  78

A Leaf of Tobacco  79

Barbecue Service  80

Southern Voices  81

The Morning After  83

Greene County Pastoral  84

Quitting Time  86

How to Fix a Pig (as told by Dee Grimes)  87

The Advisors  89

VI  

World's Shoulder, Turning  93

The Ford  94

Crossing on Cables  95

Constructing the River  96

Just Rain  97

Tree of Babel  98

Clear Winter  99

Like a Body in the River  100

The Sense of Light  101

When the Night Falls  102

In Sight of the Self  103

Buzzard's Roost  104

An Orphaned Voice  105

House of Seasons  106

The Water-Machine  107

The Sex of Divinity  108

Light Beyond Thought  109

Out of My Circle  110

Prayer for My Son  111

The Bison  112

Bridge Back Toward the South  114

Driving Toward Cairo  115

Rivers  116

The Self, that Dark Star  117

Sleeping with Stars an Bulbs, Time and Its Signs  118b

The War Against Nature  121

The Student Pilot Sleeps  122

Lessons in Soaring  123

Art and the Garden  125

The Failure in Southern Representation  126

A Place and a Voice  128

Greenhouse Effect  134

The Descent  135

A Conversation  136

VIII  

Storm in the Briar Patch  143

Home Team  144

A Wilson County Farmer  145

Time at Seven Springs: An Elegy  146

After Winslow Homer's Images of Blacks  148

The Cemetery Next to Contentnea  150

A Father and Son  152

Light's Praise  154

IX  

A Voice at the River Park  157

Botanical Garden: The Costal Plains  159

Autumnal Equinox  160

Letter to My Wife, from Minnesota  161

A Tapestry in the Mirror in the Palazzo Pamphili  163

Sailing the Inlet  164

A Distant Father  166

Interstate Highway  168

Grandfather Wordsworth  170

Winner, Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, North Carolina Literary and Historical Association

"The publication of James Applewhite's Selected Poems is a signal event in the history of North Carolina literature. . . . [A] volume of uncommon consistency, a sort of spiritual autobiography less concerned with chronological circumstance than with recurrent themes, moods and motifs. . . . [M]y admiration has rarely dimmed in 50 years of study. When this poetry later gained the approval of such literary luminaries as Donald Justice, John Hollander, James Dickey and others, I did not need to feel vindicated. From the beginning, Applewhite's lines have borne the stamp of excellence, the signature of the genuine. Selected Poems is a landmark."

—Fred Chappell, News and Observer

"When reading [Selected Poems], it isn't difficult to feel as if we are in the hands of a skilled and trusted guide. Applewhite's creative judgement in these poems is pretty much beyond reproach. [His] lovely, unassuming, and clarifying last lines are the kind poetry could use more of today."—Daniel Anderson, Duke Magazine

"The human songs of death and love, religion and family, closing the collection convey Applewhite's status as a notable in Southern literary history As a Southerner, I'm drawn to the center of the book, Section Five, where form and native language combine into beauty. . . . [I] will keep Applewhite close to my heart. The South still contains the scenes James Applewhite has observed and brings here into rich focus and perspective in this new collection."—Leah Hughes, Southern Arts Journal

“For those who enjoy narrative poems with familiar landmarks—rural North Carolina landmarks—these poems from nine collections over 30 years will delight.” —Dannye Romine Powell, Charlotte Observer

“[T]hese poems demonstrate a genuine gift for figurative thinking and writing; often they provide extraordinary recastings of the extra ordinary. , , , In these portraits and meditations we see a poet who deserves acclaim not just across the South, but across the nation.”—Robert M. West, Southern Cultures

“[A] substantial book from a poet too-often deemed "southern," somehow managing to be at once somber and lavish, a poet like Wordsworth of ideas advanced and developed as images.”—George Witte (on his blog, Poetpeeve)

“For my money, Applewhite is one of the best poets around at capturing the grace and rhythms of the haunting Southern landscape. . . . Applewhite recently published a “best of” collection that captures the terrible beauty of the natural world and the timeless legacy of small Southern towns like no one else I’ve ever read. Make no mistake: Applewhite does not dally in provincial lullabies. He is a master of verse spinning lyrical lines about collard greens and tobacco leaves, and isn’t afraid to journey into the paradoxes and idiosyncrasies of the South, which, in turn, become metaphors for our own lives.”—Michael Beadle, Smoky Mountain News

“James Applewhite's Selected Poems traces a world ranging from the rural landscape of his South with its cross-roads and tobacco to England's churches to the more universal subjects of time and children. . . . Perhaps the most compelling poems in this vein are two late ones in the collection, ‘A Distant Father’ and ‘Interstate Highway.’ In the second of these, a poem dedicated to Applewhite's daughter, traffic, here a collective figure for us all, moves over a landscape much as a river might, ‘exiting and rejoining . . . so closely linked that, / if seen from above’ it makes a ‘stasis of lights,’ and ‘the pattern we bead is constant.’ Constancy, no small matter, characterizes James Applewhite's poetry.”
—Wyatt Prunty, The Weekly Standard

“Perhaps because he has tried his hand at flying, or because he has long been an amateur student of astronomy, Applewhite’s poems . . . tend to lift off the earth and take the long, interplanetary or even intergalactic view of things. . . . Applewhite soars.”—Emily Grosholz, The Hudson Review

“Poet/critic Dave Smith has called Applewhite’s work ‘rugged and refined, classical in decorum and local in idiom, deep in wisdom and clear as water in freshness.’ That clarity and freshness is made even more apparent as this volume presents Applewhite’s poems in their intended order and logic.”—American Poet

“Applewhite conveys an intimacy with land that’s increasingly rare in a culture of frequent flyer miles and truncated attention spans. People and place are so seamlessly entwined here that they know each other like longtime lovers, when ‘no words ... are enough.’ . . . Integrity of craft and compassion merge in what Applewhite terms his ‘seasoned diary.’”—Melanie Drane, Foreword

Winner, Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, North Carolina Literary and Historical Association

"The publication of James Applewhite's Selected Poems is a signal event in the history of North Carolina literature. . . . [A] volume of uncommon consistency, a sort of spiritual autobiography less concerned with chronological circumstance than with recurrent themes, moods and motifs. . . . [M]y admiration has rarely dimmed in 50 years of study. When this poetry later gained the approval of such literary luminaries as Donald Justice, John Hollander, James Dickey and others, I did not need to feel vindicated. From the beginning, Applewhite's lines have borne the stamp of excellence, the signature of the genuine. Selected Poems is a landmark."

—Fred Chappell, News and Observer

"When reading [Selected Poems], it isn't difficult to feel as if we are in the hands of a skilled and trusted guide. Applewhite's creative judgement in these poems is pretty much beyond reproach. [His] lovely, unassuming, and clarifying last lines are the kind poetry could use more of today."—Daniel Anderson, Duke Magazine

"The human songs of death and love, religion and family, closing the collection convey Applewhite's status as a notable in Southern literary history As a Southerner, I'm drawn to the center of the book, Section Five, where form and native language combine into beauty. . . . [I] will keep Applewhite close to my heart. The South still contains the scenes James Applewhite has observed and brings here into rich focus and perspective in this new collection."—Leah Hughes, Southern Arts Journal

“For those who enjoy narrative poems with familiar landmarks—rural North Carolina landmarks—these poems from nine collections over 30 years will delight.” —Dannye Romine Powell, Charlotte Observer

“[T]hese poems demonstrate a genuine gift for figurative thinking and writing; often they provide extraordinary recastings of the extra ordinary. , , , In these portraits and meditations we see a poet who deserves acclaim not just across the South, but across the nation.”—Robert M. West, Southern Cultures

“[A] substantial book from a poet too-often deemed "southern," somehow managing to be at once somber and lavish, a poet like Wordsworth of ideas advanced and developed as images.”—George Witte (on his blog, Poetpeeve)

“For my money, Applewhite is one of the best poets around at capturing the grace and rhythms of the haunting Southern landscape. . . . Applewhite recently published a “best of” collection that captures the terrible beauty of the natural world and the timeless legacy of small Southern towns like no one else I’ve ever read. Make no mistake: Applewhite does not dally in provincial lullabies. He is a master of verse spinning lyrical lines about collard greens and tobacco leaves, and isn’t afraid to journey into the paradoxes and idiosyncrasies of the South, which, in turn, become metaphors for our own lives.”—Michael Beadle, Smoky Mountain News

“James Applewhite's Selected Poems traces a world ranging from the rural landscape of his South with its cross-roads and tobacco to England's churches to the more universal subjects of time and children. . . . Perhaps the most compelling poems in this vein are two late ones in the collection, ‘A Distant Father’ and ‘Interstate Highway.’ In the second of these, a poem dedicated to Applewhite's daughter, traffic, here a collective figure for us all, moves over a landscape much as a river might, ‘exiting and rejoining . . . so closely linked that, / if seen from above’ it makes a ‘stasis of lights,’ and ‘the pattern we bead is constant.’ Constancy, no small matter, characterizes James Applewhite's poetry.”
—Wyatt Prunty, The Weekly Standard

“Perhaps because he has tried his hand at flying, or because he has long been an amateur student of astronomy, Applewhite’s poems . . . tend to lift off the earth and take the long, interplanetary or even intergalactic view of things. . . . Applewhite soars.”—Emily Grosholz, The Hudson Review

“Poet/critic Dave Smith has called Applewhite’s work ‘rugged and refined, classical in decorum and local in idiom, deep in wisdom and clear as water in freshness.’ That clarity and freshness is made even more apparent as this volume presents Applewhite’s poems in their intended order and logic.”—American Poet

“Applewhite conveys an intimacy with land that’s increasingly rare in a culture of frequent flyer miles and truncated attention spans. People and place are so seamlessly entwined here that they know each other like longtime lovers, when ‘no words ... are enough.’ . . . Integrity of craft and compassion merge in what Applewhite terms his ‘seasoned diary.’”—Melanie Drane, Foreword

“James Applewhite writes of his childhood and later life in rural North Carolina (‘places not much in anyone’s thoughts’) in language whose timeless gravity and sweetness are close to sublime. An essential book.”—John Ashbery

“James Applewhite has individuated a logical and meditative voice all his own. I cannot think of more than a few living American poets who fuse so remarkably intellect and emotion.”—Harold Bloom

“James Applewhite and Seamus Heaney are the same kind of talents and Applewhite’s Selected Poems suggests accomplishment worthy of comparison. It is rugged and refined, classical in decorum and local in idiom, deep in wisdom and clear as water in freshness. It is a compact, luminous etching of a singular imagination working to get down the way it was and is in this place on the planet.”—Dave Smith

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