Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Loving The Mountains, Leaving The Mountains: The Appalachian Dilemma And Jim Wayne Miller’S The Brier Poems, Madeline Dawson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For decades now, the Appalachian community has been internally combatting two equally strong feelings—an inherently rich love of the mountains and a conflicting urge to leave the mountains. In recent years, Appalachian writers have produced a new literary tradition of identifying, discussing, and remedying this dilemma. Jim Wayne Miller’s 1997 The Brier Poems unapologetically explores the Appalachian community’s complicated relationship to its region. bell hooks’ 2012 Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place and Savannah Sipple’s 2019 WWJD and Other Poems then expand Miller’s exploration as both hooks and Sipple collectively represent voices that have often been left out of the stereotypical …