Anthology Presents Ozarks

EDITOR’S OWN WORK COVERED THROUGH POEMS

In “Yonder Mountain: An Ozarks Anthology,” new from University of Arkansas Press, Anthony Priest presents a contemporary version of the 1983 “Ozark, Ozark: A Hillside Reader,” by Miller Williams, a professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas, who also helped found University Press.

“Writers write about what they know. I’m from the Ozarks, of course,” Priest said in a phone interview last week while taking a break from mowing his steep Ozarks lawn in West Plains, Mo. He is an associate professor of English at Missouri State University-West Plains.

Priest grew up in Ebenezer, Mo., just outside of Springfield. With an undergraduate degree from what is now Missouri State University in Springfield, he continued his studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Being far from home, you reminisce,” he said. “I missed the landscape. Southern Illinois (across the Mississippi River from St. Louis) is all flat. It’s hard to orient yourself. You’re nestled in your own little niche there, so you don’t feel so exposed.

“St. Louis is a big city,” he continued. “The pace is quicker and less peaceful. When I went home for holidays, I noticed the people are much more genuine (in the Ozarks).”

After graduate school in 1996, Priest began collecting Ozarks books. The collection includes some very familiar names,he said, writers he knew personally or admired their work.

“I read a lot of writers from the Ozarks to make my writing better,” he said.

With a proposal to publish “Yonder Mountain” in a year, Priest contacted some of these writers.

“They all loved the idea of writing about their lives in the Ozarks,” he said.

If readers are from the Ozarks, they will recognize folks from the book and the shared history, he said. If readers are not from the Ozarks, he hopes they will recognize the Ozarks have a strong history of literature.

“Most know the Ozarks only from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ (a 1960s television series), Branson and ‘pickin’ and grinnin’,” he said.

Writer Jo McDougall says of the book, “Beloved, feared, stereotyped, mythologized, shamed, and revered: the Ozarks region is and has been all of these. Garnering work from folks who know the region best, Priest serves up a trove of fine writing and an unflinching look at a region that continues to both bewitch and confound.”

Priest said he is most proud of “Yonder Mountain”selection “Telling Time” by Donald Harington, a prolific Ozarks writer. Harington died in 2009, and Priest worked with his family to include this never-before-published selection.

Priest also pointed to “Swimming at Flat Bridge, 1963” by Jo Van Arkel.

“‘Ozark, Ozark’ had very few women writers, but there are some very fine female writers in the Ozarks, and they’ve contributed amazing pieces,” he said.

Priest’s own work is represented through poems “Aux Arcs” and “Settling Velocity.”

“I never write in my office,” Priest said. “I still write by hand with a pencil and paper. The blank screen with the cursor blinking at you provides no inspiration, no motivation to write. With a pencil and paper, you have time to sit and ponder.”

Aux Arcs by Anthony Priest

When the first French explorers swept down

into the heart of these Ozark hills,

found the bois d’arc - the Osage orange -

and followed the course of the Little Sac

trading bows and bear skin for tools,

who could have imagined this? Fair Grounds,

Crystal Cave, Route 66 spilling

light and an endless stream of billboards:

Queen City Diner, Hillbilly Doc’s,

Fantastic Caverns cave you ride through.

Standing on a bridge above the drowned

Sac valley, I like to think the still

shapes of trees are Osage come to mourn.

Dark waters move. Below where I walk,

old gods of the rain lie wrapped in pools.

Life, Pages 10 on 05/29/2013

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