Overview

A Day of It, the ninth book of poems by Michael Chitwood, is a fanfare for the commonplace and the oft overlooked, both among places and people. In the spirit of Seamus Heaney, Chitwood's poetry seeks the whereabouts of the ""thin places"" in the everyday—an abandoned barn, a weedy roadside, even an antique sewing machine. The dwindling tobacco fields and shuttered textile mills of Chitwood's native Appalachia bring to bear both personal and historical revelations. The complicated history of the region entwines with the personal in sonically rich lyrics. This is no Appalachian elegy, but Appalachian homage. The poems in A Day of It pay people and place their greatest compliment: attention.

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9780807186046

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Reviews

""Michael Chitwood's poetry honors inventive southern folk vernacular and converses with contemporary literary greats such as Stanford and Levine—in a flawless style all his own. Many poems look back, but to read them is 'more like time being made, not passing' and you'll want to linger as long as you can in the observant stillness with which the book graces us."" - Rose McLarney ""There are few contemporary poets who have Chitwood's generous thankfulness for the ordinary."" - Ron Smith ""This charming book is a love song for a rural world of self-sufficiency, good humor, hard work, and grace. Here is a poetry of solace and consolation, a dropperful of pennyroyal for our troubled times."" - Adrian Blevins ""The unassuming wisdom in A Day of It coaxes farm life into living experience and preserves the cultural history of the rural South. A barn becomes encapsulated time, knowledge to be attained, lineage, and the spirit of the backwoods sublime that only those who approach humbly and without expectation can witness in the seemingly mundane. Chitwood is one of the finest poets of our generation. He teaches without teaching."" - Adam Vines

Author Information

Michael Chitwood's work has received the L. E. Phillabaum Award from LSU Press, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Poetry.

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