Writer Profile
Books & Essays
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Title:
Fable in the Blood: The Selected Poems of Byron Herbert Reece
Date Published:
University of Georgia Press 2002Description:
Collected here are poems by one of Georgia's most intriguing and talented poets of the twentieth century. Byron Herbert Reece was born in Union County, Georgia, in 1917 and authored four volumes of poems and two novels during his short lifetime. Until now, many of his poems, originally published in the 1940s and 1950s, have been out of print. Reece, who faithfully assumed responsibility for his family's farm when his parents became ill, was never a poet of the academic ivory tower. Indeed, he rebelled against the rising New Criticism associated with the Vanderbilt Fugitives, the elite of southern poetry at that time.
Reece's work reflects both the devastating impact of his parents' death from tuberculosis and his own affliction with the disease, which caused him to distance himself from others: "A solitary thing am I / Upon the roads of rust and flame / That thin at sunset to the air." Reece was also preoccupied with his ambivalence toward the farm, which sustained his solitude yet took time away from his writing: "In the far, dark woods go roving / And find there to match your mood / A kindred spirit moving / Where the wild winds blow in the wood." Reece's poetry is resonant and contemplative, and Jim Clark has included here works that speak for the true grace of Reece's talent. In addition, Clark's attentive introduction should bring increased interest to this notable southern poet.
Editor Jim Clark is a professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. He is the author of a collection of short stories and two collections of poems, including Handiwork, nominated for Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association.
Book Review #1:
"Jim Clark has performed his labors with obvious love but with fine critical discrimination. . . . Here is a poetry steeped in tradition that is as fresh as morning milk, that has affinities not only with Robert Herrick in the 17th century and with E.A. Robinson in the 20th, that honors techniques regarded as outmoded and makes them brightly, even abradingly, expressive." Fred Chappell
Book Review #2:
"Jim Clark . . . has chosen poems that reflect the best of Reece's considerable talent. In addition, his excellent introductory remarks do much to place Reece in his rightful place as an admired Southern poet." Bettie M. Sellers, Journal of Appalachian Studies
Book Review #3:
"Jim Clark's book affectionately brings back into print poems originally published in the 1940s and 1950s by one of North Georgia's most intriguing and neglected poets." Now & Then
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Title:
The Hawk and the Sun
Date Published:
University of Georgia Press 1994Description:
Set in the small-town, pre-civil rights South, The Hawk and the Sun is the story of one day in the life of Dandelion, a physically impaired man who is the sole black resident in the town of Tilden. Years before, the birth of a mixed-race child to a white prostitute had precipitated an outpouring of hatred against Tilden's black citizens, all of whom but Dandelion had been driven from town. In this atmosphere of smoldering self-righteousness, Dandelion survives on handouts and what little he can earn from odd jobs. Finally, the town turns against him as well. In this novel, first published in 1955, Byron Herbert Reece brings his readers face to face with the horrifying spectacle of collective fear and racism.
Book Review #1:
"Reece... has written a clean-cut, stark, and sensitive novel. It is a dramatic poet's novel, laid down in squares and blocks of light and color and lightlessness....classic in form and machinelike in its work....It is a cold and savage poem, a masked dumb show of human ignorance and violence." New York Times
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Title:
Better a Dinner of Herbs
Date Published:
University of Georgia Press 1993Description:
Better a Dinner of Herbs is a compellingly dramatic tale of twisted, often violent human relationships. Taking its title from a biblical passage dealing with the power of love and hate within a household, the novel counterbalances its grim narrative with a poetic prose that evokes a reverence for the rhythm of the seasons and the continuity of life.
Book Review #1:
"There are lyric passages in Better a Dinner of Herbs, but its mood stems rather from that of the ballad, indigenous to Mr. Reece's country and the substance of his earlier book of poems. Here is none of the self-consciousness that is commonly associated with the 'primitive' in contemporary writing or art. The author's understanding and acceptance of his characters and the directness of his portrayal give them worth in their own right. Better a Dinner of Herbs is an unusual novel, sincere and oddly stirring." New York Herald Tribune
Book Review #2:
"Mr. Reece weaves well. With simplicity, honesty, and an almost biblical reliance on the repeated image, he balances emotion with desperate event. The result is powerful and often beautiful." Saturday Review
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Title:
The Season of Flesh
Date Published:
E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1955 -
Title:
A Song of Joy
Date Published:
E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1952 -
Title:
Bow Down in Jericho
Date Published:
E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1950
Title:
Ballad of the Bones, And Other Poems
Date Published:
E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1945