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Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note JASON HOWARD n his poem "Digging," the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney depicts a writer at his desk, a pen resting "Between my finger and my thumb," ready to begin his day's work. But the narrator becomes distracted by the sound of a spade striking gravel, and he looks out to find his father's "straining rump among the flowerbeds," digging away. The sight of his bent father floods him with a vortex of memory--of his father digging potatoes, of his grandfather cutting the turf of a peat bog, of the narrator himself carrying a bottle of milk to his working grandfather. "But I've no spade to follow men like them," the speaker mourns, before turning his attention to the "squat pen" in his hand. "I'll dig with it," he concludes, a precise summation of the writing life. Like the poem's narrator, the authors in this issue have chosen to excavate through their writing. They know how to handle a pen, using it to plough their memories, subconscious, and imaginations, tending to their vocation as faithfully as any farmer or field hand. And in this issue, they have gathered their harvest for us here, a farm-to-table gift for http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Appalachian Review University of North Carolina Press

Editor’s Note

Howard, Jason
Appalachian Review , Volume 42 (4) – Nov 12, 2014
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © Berea College
ISSN
1940-5081
Publisher site
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Abstract

JASON HOWARD n his poem "Digging," the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney depicts a writer at his desk, a pen resting "Between my finger and my thumb," ready to begin his day's work. But the narrator becomes distracted by the sound of a spade striking gravel, and he looks out to find his father's "straining rump among the flowerbeds," digging away. The sight of his bent father floods him with a vortex of memory--of his father digging potatoes, of his grandfather cutting the turf of a peat bog, of the narrator himself carrying a bottle of milk to his working grandfather. "But I've no spade to follow men like them," the speaker mourns, before turning his attention to the "squat pen" in his hand. "I'll dig with it," he concludes, a precise summation of the writing life. Like the poem's narrator, the authors in this issue have chosen to excavate through their writing. They know how to handle a pen, using it to plough their memories, subconscious, and imaginations, tending to their vocation as faithfully as any farmer or field hand. And in this issue, they have gathered their harvest for us here, a farm-to-table gift for

Journal

Appalachian Review – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Nov 12, 2014

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