George Scarbrough, Appalachian Poet

Randy Mackin teaches writing and literature, and directs the Tennessee Literary Project, at Middle Tennessee State University. Editor of the weekly Buffalo River Review in Linden, Tennessee, he is a four-time Meeman Foundation Award winner for editorial writing.

“a masterful treatment of a complex and deserving writer. Indeed, one hopes that George Scarbrough can now rest in peace with the assurance that his story has finally and superbly been told”—Appalachian Journal; “Mackin seems to have followed every trail and sidepath, examined every clue, and assembled the resulting knowledge into this fascinating and near-obsessive (as all books of this kind must be if they are to amount to anything) mosaic to explain this creative and complicated poet. Part biography, part critical analysis, and enormously readable, Mackin’s book seems sometimes to ponder the nature of creativity itself.”—William Gay, author of The Long Home, Provinces of Night, and Twilight, and I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down (short stories).

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments     Preface      Introduction      Part I—Walking the Paths of His Own Premise: The Life and Literature of George ScarbroughOne: Biography      Two: Family      Three: Songs of Defiance to Death      Four: A Small, Comfortable World      Five: The Novel      Six: Holding Han-Shan’s Hand      Seven: Myth and Metaphor Out of the Way      Eight: Scarbrough’s Critics      Part II: Selected Unpublished Poems, Letters and ConversationsNine: A Selection of Previously Unpublished Verse and “Good Friday, New Mexico, 1955”      Ten: A Selection of Scarbrough’s Letters      Eleven: A Selection of Letters to Scarbrough      Twelve: “Something of a Bio and an Itinerary” (by George Scarbrough)      Thirteen: An Interview      Appendix: Publications and Awards      Bibliography      Index