Appalachian Picture Book by Dee Stribling

“In Appalachian Picture Book, Dee Stribling digs deeply not only into her beloved Appalachian terrain, but also into the promise memory makes to the heart: to never forget. Every cherished moment is stilled, just like in a picture book, where we see in pristine detail “a single sagebrush cane / [clinging] to frozen windowpane,” and “crevices in rock faces waiting for / tears to wash them free in a flood of /mud and gravel and roughness.” This poet’s ear is to the earth and her language mimes that music, whether it’s ballad, madrigal, folk idiom – even her often brash speaker in a white Barracuda, “holding her sideways into a turn” … “taking that Hurst shifter where it wants / to go an’ where you ain’t never been.” This book has range and soul – a voice that will take you anywhere you want to go.

–Joseph Bathanti, former NC Poet Laureate

Rating: *****  [5 of 5 Stars!]

In Dee Stribling‘s Appalachian Picture Book, the hills are filled with a quiet beauty that is at times as ominous as it is picturesque. These poems never settle but quiver like memory and “blue smoke com[ing] across the field.”

–Erin Elizabeth Smith (Sundress Publishing)

Rating:  ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]