Where I Live: Coming Home to the Southern Mountains by Jennie Boyd Bull
$13.99
Jennie Boyd Bull‘s poems rise from careful observation and naming of all she sees: her birds are not just birds but chickadees, cardinals, and juncos; her tomatoes, sun golds, tommy toes, and cosmonauts. She then brings that same close attention to how her body is at play with that world–attention grounded in her practice of Tai Chi–writing, “the wind breathes me.” Steeped in the mountains of Western North Carolina, Where I Live is a lovely and loving praise song for Bull’s new chosen home.
–Jessica Jacobs, author of Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press)
Jennie Boyd Bull frees us to love again what can become too familiar over time. The reader will find in Where I Live sweet solace in a uniquely Southern sense of place and time, cut with the harsh realities of modern Appalachia. The poet’s words both warn and welcome, hiking over the rocky past of white history with open eyes, only to return to the rough beauty of the mountains with an open heart. Let us offer a warm embrace to Jennie and her poetry, forever a part of the place and time we all call home.
–Mendy Knott, author of Lost and Found in Dallas (2 Poets Ink), A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press), and host of Poets Under the Maples
In this new collection, Where I Live: Coming Home to the Southern Mountains, Jennie Boyd Bull takes long strides in her return to the mountains, where she says, “earth and heaven join in each breath.” Ms. Bull dives into landscape and shows us “the subtle light of grace” shining through. These poems become a testament to her coming home and we witness her refrain, “How can I keep from singing?” Spending time with her poems, “the mind drops into a pool of silence and dissolves there.”
–Anne Maren-Hogan, author of Laying the Past in the Light (Longleaf Press) and The Farmer’s Wake (Finishing Line Press).
Description
Where I Live: Coming Home to the Southern Mountains
by Jennie Boyd Bull
$13.99, paper
978-1-63534-467-7
2018
Jennie Boyd Bull recently retired to the mountains of Western North Carolina, following careers as an editor, pastor, bookstore manager, librarian, and archivist with nonprofits in Maryland and New York State. Raised in Knoxville, TN, she is grateful to return home to the Appalachians, where she enjoys teaching Tai Chi, hiking, gardening, weaving, writing, and volunteering with the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. Her poems have appeared in several North Carolina periodicals.
Gayle (verified owner) –
I love how Jennie writes of meeting neighbors, coming out at a book club, and meditation through the seasons. Anyone that has moved and has to find themselves a new will relate to Jennie’s poems. She is a soft, beautiful light shining in NC!
kathy –
Jennie Boyd Bull describes her life in her new home in the Western North Carolina Mountains. Yet, her poems will touch anyone settling into their mind,body and soul.