"A Picture From Life's Other Side: Appalachian Poems" by Bob Henry Baber

At times when I am in a book buying mood, I will often stray into other books I had not set out to search for and buy one or two I had not foreseen. Although, I had not planned to buy this book, I had been aware of its existence virtually since the day it was published. I was recently searching for a book or two which had roots in the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, especially one or two which had been published by individuals such as Gail Amburgey, Pauletta Hansel, P. J. Laska, and Robert "Bob" Snyder. I found a copy of this book by Bob Henry Baber who had also been a student at the Southern Appalachian Circuit and decided to buy it. It has been relatively rare to find it on the typical used book websites such as Abe Books and Alibris from which I have bought hundreds of books over the years. Amazingly the copy I found was also in near perfect condition and signed with a generic signature. Bob Henry Baber self published this book in 1994. The title is taken from the music of Hank Williams and his song by the same name. Several of the poems had been previously published in small journals around the country including "Appalachian Heritage", "Appalachian Journal", and "Cold Mountain Review". Many of the poems are rooted in the coal mining industry as is a great deal of Appalachian writing. Some such as "Let Me Hide Myself In Thee" are comments on or reflections of the sometimes fundamentalist religion of much of Central and Southern Appalachia, Others of the poems such as "Taking Title" are strong examples of the Appalachian Value which Loyal Jones called Love of Place. Bob Henry Baber's life, as I have known him, has always been deeply rooted in his historical family farm near Richwood, West Virginia, which Bob has always referred to as "Baber Mountain". For several years, he held a summer get together there which was attended by both members of his family and his friends in the world of Appalachian Literature. Like many other, if not most, native Appalachians Bob Henry Baber has also penned his own paean to the Appalachian family cemetery in the poem "Severed Threads". The lines: "Who will bury our spirits beneath hearthstones to protect them from frigid air? Who will stir our memories and throw kindling on our ancient dreams? Who will cut the cemetery grass that will so shortly be given over to woods?" are another feelingly rendered manifestation of the deep rooted Appalachian people to the many cherished but overgrown mountain cemeteries on long lost family farms which had been scratched out of the resistant mountains of West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Western Virginia, and North Carolina. He chose to end the book with that poem and it was a fitting tribute to the ties which have always bound him to those mountain acres near Richwood where his ancestors made love to the land with gooseneck hoes, double bit axes, and hillside turning plows, and carried their hard earned raisings from the field to the root cellar in order to weather one more winter on the place which had woven its way into their hearts.