Poet and artist, Larry D. Thacker's third full collection of poetry, Feasts of Evasion, walks hand-in-hand with us into the daily lands of both the mundane and the mind-blowing details of living. That "there is poetry everywhere, in the make-up of everything, within everyone" Thacker would have us remember, how we find it is as varied as finding stillness in the train horn, the kudzu vine, the lonely hospital prayer book, or a few seconds at a fume-ridden intersection. Called "fierce and fearless" poetry by poet Mary Carroll-Hackett and "a necessary book" by writer Karen Salyer McElmurry, Thacker's work once again invites readers to live a double life, adding a new set of eyes for living.
Humorous and wry stories of misfits and ordinary people in an Appalachian community struggling creatively to make sense of an often nonsensical world. "It seems like everybody but people from here are sure about what we're about, and they make money being wrong about it." The residents of Labor County, a fictional small community in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, may be short on cash, but they are rich in creativity and tirelessly inventive as they concoct new schemes to make ends meet, settle old scores, and work off their debts to society and, in a way, to themselves. A zealous history professor is caught stealing from the local museum in protest of petty theft; an arsonist strikes it lucky--twice; a skilled leatherworker saddles a turkey and finds a rider; an angel aspires to be a punk rock Roller Derby princess; a grieving artist carves a miracle into a roadside rock face; and affable Uncle Archie produces a seemingly unending supply of new and bizarre items to display in his Odditorium. More than a collection of tales, Working It Off in Labor County assembles memorable characters who recur across these seventeen linked stories, sharing in one another's struggles and stumbling upon humor and mystery, the grotesque and the divine, each in many forms.
We're set loose, untended, like beings from a menagerie of sorts, one day cooped up, the next fending for ourselves out in the oddness of the world ding for ourselves out in the oddness of the world. This is the motif pursued in GATELESS MENAGERIE. We intersect with the wild as well when out roaming, reacquainting with the animal kingdom and it with us. We are one in the same: gateless and viewed. How do the animals see us? How do we appear to them? Are we in harmony or only tolerating one another?
A near-obsessive pursuit of ghost stories and odd superstitions cranks up this serious study of Appalachian tales of the supernatural and their origin in both old-world customs and real historical events. An effort to preserve and record one aspect of a dying way of life, the book relies on interviews and historic documents to search for the facts behind local lore of murder, witchcraft, and weird hauntings. Several campfire-worthy ghost stories are recounted in their entirety—including "The Swinging Gate of Fern Lake Hollow"—and an unexpectedly large number of stories about aliens and UFOs provide an interesting comparison of three-century-old mysteries and those stirred up in comparatively recent times
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