Column: A journal becoming more reflective of us
Well, what do you know: There are literary voices in Northern Appalachia that aren’t dark and self-loathing!
Not that there was any real doubt about that. During my five years spent editing a regional magazine and another 20 years of writing weekly newspaper columns about the Alleghenies, the northern Appalachians have been an endless source of positive topics.
But then a new literary journal, titled “Northern Appalachia Review,” came along in 2020 and described a region I didn’t recognize in its premier Volume 1 edition. Its nonfiction, fiction and poetic works were predominantly depressing, many of them focusing upon death, economic depression, expatriation and environmental degradation.
In my review of Volume 1, I wrote, “… the body of work in this first volume does not convey the character of the people and places of northern Appalachia very positively. And that’s not a knock on the NAR, which is just the vehicle.”
Northern Appalachia Review is a collaborative product of writers and editors who want to see the region recognized on the national literary landscape. Its founder and editor-in-chief is PJ Piccirillo, a St. Marys writer who for decades has been campaigning for recognition of the literature that has been produced or inspired by this place.
Well Volume 2 was published last fall. Gladly, this is a book I can recommend as a good winter read, for this is a Northern Appalachia we will recognize and value.
A first-person account, “Slag,” finds beauty and awe in a common waste product of our industrial heritage. A fanciful piece has a sugar maple describing the history it has witnessed.
You don’t have to be a hunter to appreciate the leisurely first-person perspectives of “Survival,” which brings us within the inter-generational traditions of the hunt and what it can mean on a deeply emotional level for its participants.
“Dunbar Creek” does an impressive job of tying important national narratives involving the French and Indian War, coal-mining and coke-making, to Chestnut Ridge. But the author goes even further, describing the special ecological qualities that make this place’s flora and fauna distinctive.
Dunbar Creek concludes with a description of how extensive efforts to clean a “dead” polluted steam basin have resulted in a proposal to designate the titular stream as an “Exceptional Value” waterway.
This one extensive, well-written narrative does more to illuminate and connect the special qualities and characteristics of Northern Appalachia than the entire first volume of the NAR accomplished.
Literati quite likely would accuse me of confusing literature with promotion. I’d counter that they think angst is art.
The Northern Appalachians certainly contain ugly elements and many rough edges, which can be appropriate subjects for literary exploration. There are those types of forays in Volume 2.
But the overall tone is much more balanced than it was in Volume 1 — even within the poetry, which generally seems to draw more-negative perspectives, at least within this literary review.
While many of the poems still come off as peckish, expressing dissatisfaction, others capture the region’s natural qualities with bright and lilting words. “Workshop Comparing Chinese Zen Poetry to Appalachian Poetry” is one, “Tonight, There is the Moon” is another.
Then there’s my favorite piece in Volume 2: “I Don’t Know How to BE Appalachian,” somewhere between prose and poetry, oscillating between negative and positive, descriptive and profound.
My commendations to the editors of Northern Appalachia Review for finding a much-improved rhythm after a rough start with Volume 1. Volume 2 does more literary justice to our region and furthers the cause of establishing a canon.
Volume 3 is scheduled for release in March. Writers, get to your keyboards. Before long there will be a call for submissions for Volume 4, and we have a worthy region to write about.
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For information about Northern Appalachian Review and how to purchase Volume 2, visit NorthernAppReview.com
To respond to this column — or read other columns by Dave Hurst — visit www.hurstmediaworks.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Dave Hurst column about literary journal Northern Appalachia Review
