Description
The Milkweed Ladies is written out of deep affection for and intimate knowledge of the lives of rural people and the rhythms of the natural world. It is a personal account of the farm in southern West Virginia where poet Louise McNeill's family has lived for nine generations.
The Milkweed Ladies is filled with memorable characters--an herb-gathering granny, McNeill's sailor father, her patient, flower-loving mother, and Aunt Malindy in her "black sateen dress" who "never did a lick of work." McNeill writes movingly of the harsh routines of the lives of her family, from spring plowing to winter sugaring, and of the hold the farm itself has on them and the earth itself on all of us. McNeill juxtaposes the life of the farm with the larger world events that impinge on it, such as the destruction from lumber companies in the 1930s and World War II in the '40s.
With her poet's gift for detail and language, McNeill creates a particular world forgotten by many of us, and to some of us, never known.
Author: Louise McNeill
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 08/19/1988
Pages: 136
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.37lbs
Size: 7.96h x 5.04w x 0.39d
ISBN13: 9780822954064
ISBN10: 0822954060
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
About the Author
Louise McNeill has published, in addition to her several books of poetry, short stories and essays. She has been poet laureate of West Virginia since 1979, and in 1988 she was awarded the Appalachian Gold Medallion by the University of Charleston.