Appalachian Patterns (review)

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A nonmetrical "Triolet" dazzlingly accomplishes that French form's rhymes and repetitions while pondering the opening of the Fourth Gospel. "Legends" commemorates Thomas Wolfe's centennial in strict trochaic tetrameter, finally becoming as incantatory as any of Wolfe's own rhapsodic flights. The new poems eschew the kind of Appalachian cultural history for which Morgan is famous; they remind us that he is also a nature poet, an object poet, a poet interested in literature, and a poet of personal and family history. "Nature" includes outer space: one of the new poems, "The Strange Attractor," considers an invisible interstellar mass that tugs at the visible universe. How appropriate that Morgan should let that title double as the book's: poetry cannot approach prose's ability to reach an audience, yet here is a bestselling novelist re-consolidating and adding to his poetic corpus. The muse is a strange attractor indeed. —Robert M. West Bo Ball. Appalachian Patterns. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. 162 pages. Paperback. $17.00. Few Appalachian short story writers have been accepted as avidly outside of Appalachia as Bo Ball, whose collection, Appalachian Patterns, was recently re-issued by University Press of Kentucky. 81 Ball, a retired English professor at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, has published short stories in such prestigious places as The Chicago Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, and Carolina Quarterly, with two of these stories appearing in Volume 5 and Volume 10 of the Pushcart Prize, a national yearly short story showplace. I was Bo Ball's student for classes in Renaissance Literature and Shakespeare at Eastern Kentucky University near the start of his career. As a teacher, Ball had the ability to inject his love of literature with a burning enthusiasm for what he was teaching. He didn't overpower students, yet he made his excitement for the literary work contagious enough that students, too, wanted to catch the same fire, seeking to share in his fervor. Even though it has been nearly forty years, I still remember particularly his discussion of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. By the end of the hour, Antony and Cleopatra stood in our classroom, all warts and jewels, and came alive for us in this unique aesthetic experience. I have loved that play and Shakespeare ever since. There is good reason Ball's works have garnered the attention of so many quality literary journals inside and outside Appalachia. Although they can be challenging to the novice, Ball's stories are rewarding for their blunt, many times hilarious, perceptions, their refreshing honesty, and at other times, their engaging style and tone. In the hands of the less creative, the characters could perpetuate the demeaning stereotypes of Appalachian people and their squalid lives. But instead of the country bumpkin in his bib overalls and the blueeyed and barefooted hillbilly lass, we are served up a rich stew of meticulously delineated characters who certainly do speak in the unique dialect of the region, but whose speech and insights transcend the cardboard creations of other less adept and gifted writers. The stories in Appalachian Patterns are set in Copperhead in Buchanan County, located at the western tip of Virginia, that sliver of the Old Dominion State that slides under Kentucky and meets West Virginia on the north. Some of the vast array of characters from Copperhead appear in several of the stories. Four stories stand out and provide the flavor of the rest of the collection. Particularly discerning is "The Quilt," an engaging tale set mostly at a quilting party of mountain women. As they quilt they share news and reveal their unique personalities. There's Aunt Viney," called Aunt long before her parts dried up on her." There's Tory whose "low voice" is "distorted slightly by the pipe that rested around moist bubbles in 82 the corner of her mouth...." There, too, is Oney Tiller "whose cud of tobacco often made a mimer in the work of hand and mouth." Also there's Lucie, the youngest of the quilters, "nineteen, but fifty... ." Or there's Roxie Penley, "her back so straight it dared the body waist down to give her the lie. Her furry mole...