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(July 17, 1947–)

Poet Jane Wilson Joyce grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. Her mother is a painter and a native of England, and her father spent his entire life in upper East Tennessee. “What with his stories, and her habit of looking, I found a lot of what I needed in their relationship to the region—how they helped me see and be there,” says Joyce.

Joyce earned a B.A. in Latin from Bryn Mawr College in 1969, an M.A. in Greek from the University of Texas in 1972, and her Ph.D. in classics from the University of Texas in 1982.

Her poetry collection
Beyond the Blue Mountains
follows “the journey of an imaginary family travelling from Kentucky to Oregon in 1852.” The original publication of her collection
The Quilt Poems
was by Mill Springs Press. These poems appear in
Quilt Pieces
by Gnomon Press, along with a short story by Meredith Sue Willis.

She has been on the faculty of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, since 1978. “I teach a wide range of courses in the Classics—language, literature, culture,” says Joyce. She was instrumental in the establishment of Centre's major in the classics, and has been awarded the designation of Distinguished Professor of Humanities. Currently, she is the Luellen Professor of Literature.

Poetry:
Beyond the Blue Mountains
(1992),
The Quilt Poems
in
Quilt Pieces
(1992).

from
Old Wounds, New Words: Poems from the Appalachian Poetry Project
(1994)

I had read in National Geographic
how in Alaska, or some places like it
where chill mysteries winter,
people stand on ice ten months thick
and see fish glint far beneath
shivering the deep green with their speed.

I stood on creek ice
one windfall of a subzero day
skating thin and bladeless
on a dare. Dreaming of parkas,
the huskies' bark, a fish-hook gleaming
carved from a fat walrus tusk,
I saw only the bent brown ribs
of the old year's reeds
like a kayak skeleton
breaking up in the backwater.

Whatever I saw or didn't in the mud,
come spring and full summer
the creek overflowed
with tadpoles, snapping-turtles, water-bugs,
the green wink of a lizard disappearing.
I kept one eye peeled
in hopes of cottonmouth, water-moccasin
as I kneeled in the weeds, sleeve hiked,
feeling in water brown as tobacco
for the least thrill of minnows
shimmering between my fingers.

from
Quilt Pieces
(1992)

Mama, I finished your quilt
but my heart wasn't in it
like yours was
so my work stands out—
plain crochet, thin and poor
alongside of yours.

I watched you
cut up the uniforms
they shipped home from Virginia,
sliding your big scissorblades
up the trouserlegs
like a doctor
slicing open a boot
when the leg inside is broken.

You sat, skeins striping
your black skirt
green, yellow, red,
tugging heavy yarns
through the dense weave of dull cloth
strand by strand,
shearing them down
just so: 33 squares
you worked this way,
never saying a word
that wasn't bright,
while the blisters came up on your hand,
broke, and wept.

I finished the quilt—
counterpane
, you called it—
rolled it up and packed it away
in the cedar chest in the attic,
touching the rounded bunches
of cat-tails, tulips,
the one sunflower,
repeating fields of moss rose.
Why would you want to sleep
under such a weight
of remembering.

(May 12, 1898–November 7, 1989)

A prolific writer of children's books, May Justus was born in Del Rio, Tennessee. “I am a Smoky Mountaineer, born and bred, and proud of it,” wrote Justus in the 1950s. “The mountain culture of the past is fading…. The old customs, the folk speech, the ballads, the fiddle tunes, the play party singing games, the herb lore, the weather signs, the nonsense rhymes, the tall tales, even the riddles—you'll find them in the books I've written for a quarter of a century.”

Justus attended the University of Tennessee, then taught school in rural Tennessee and Kentucky. A community activist, she sought to improve not only educational opportunities, but health care and nutrition as well. She was affiliated with the Highlander Center during its early days and espoused such “liberal” ideas as integration.

She began writing stories for her students who were “always eager for the next adventure.” Her first book was published in 1927, when she was twenty-nine. One of her books,
New Boy in School
, was on the
New York Times
Best Book list for 1963, and Justus considered it one of her most significant, because it was one of the first children's books to deal with integration.

Justus's writing career spanned nearly six decades, and during that time she produced more than fifty books. The University of Tennessee's May Justus Collection contains all her books, many manuscripts, and an extensive correspondence.

Justus chose the title of her collection of folklore,
The Complete Peddler's Pack
, because of a childhood memory: “To those of us who lived far removed from the stores and shops of a city, the visit of a peddler was a thrilling event…. When the peddler loosened his load and spread its treasures on the floor, it was a sight to behold.” In the excerpts from
The Complete Peddler's Pack
, we glimpse the region's folk wisdom as recorded by Justus.

Books for children:
Jumping Jack
(1974),
Surprise for Perky Pup
(1971),
Tales from Near-Side and Far
(1970),
Eben and the Rattlesnake
(1969),
The Wonderful School of Miss Tillie O'Toole
(1969),
It Happened in No-End Hollow
(1969),
The Complete Peddler's Pack: Games, Songs, Rhymes, and Riddles from Mountain Folklore
(1966),
A New Home for Billy
(1966),
Tale of a Pig
(1963),
New Boy in School
(1963),
Smoky Mountain Sampler
(1962),
Winds A'Blowing
[poetry] (1961),
The Right House for Rowdy
(1960),
Lester and His Hound Pup
(1960),
Then Came Mr. Billy Barker
(1959),
Barney Bring Your Banjo
(1959),
Let's Play and Sing
(1958),
Jumping Johnny and Skedaddle
(1958),
Big Log Mountain
(1958),
Peddler's Pack
(1957),
Use Your Head, Hildyi
(1956),
Surprise for Peter Pocket
(1955),
Little Red Rooster Learns to Crow
(1954),
Peter Pocket and His Pickle Pup
(1953),
Whoop-ee, Hunkydory!
(1952),
Children of the Great Smoky Mountains
(1952),
Lucky Penny
(1951),
Luck for Little Lihu
(1950),
Toby Has a Dog
(1949),
Susie
(1948),
Mary Ellen
(1947),
Sammy
(1946),
Hurray for Jerry Jake
(1945),
Fiddlers' Fair
(1945),
Lizzie
(1944),
Banjo Billy and Mr. Bones
(1944),
Jerry Jake Carries On
(1943),
Bluebird, Fly Up!
(1943),
Step Along and Jerry Jake
(1942),
Nancy of Apple Tree Hill
(1942),
Fiddle Away
(1942),
Dixie Decides
(1942),
Cabin on Kettle Creek
(1941),
The Mail Wagon Mystery
(1941),
Mr. Songcatcher and Company
(1940),
Here Comes Mary Ellen
(1940),
The House in No-End Hollow
(1938),
Near-side-and-far
(1936),
Honey Jane
(1935),
Gabby Gaffer's New Shoes
(1935),
Peter Pocket's Book
(1934),
The Other Side of the Mountain
(1931),
At the Foot of Windy Low
(1930),
Gabby Gaffer
(1929),
Betty Lou of Big Log Mountain
(1928),
Peter Pocket
(1927).

Contemporary Authors
(1974), Vols. 9–10, 246.
Something About the Author
(1971), Vol. 1, 127–29. John W. Warren and Adrian W. McClaren,
Tennessee Belles-Lettres: A Guide to Tennessee Literature
(1977), 218. Eliot Wigginton, ed.
Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921–1964
(1991), 75–88, 266–72, 334–40.

from
The Complete Peddler's Pack: Games, Songs, Rhymes, and Riddles from Mountain Folklore
(1966)

Between twelve o'clock and two,
You'll see what the day will do.

Rain before seven,
Quit before eleven.

When the wind's against the sun,
Trust it not, for back ‘twill run.

When the smoke bites the ground,
Bad weather will be found.

Hoar frost on mornings twain,
On the third look for rain.

When the wind is in the north,
Man nor beast should venture forth.
When the wind is in the east,
It's good for neither man nor beast.
When the wind is in the west,
This for man and beast is best.

If the moon changes on Sunday,
Weather change is sure on Monday.

Onion skin very thin,
Pretty winter coming in.
Onion skin thick and tough,
Winter mighty cold and rough.

When April blows his horn (
thunder
)
It's good for hay and corn.

Mist in May,
Sun in June,
Makes the harvest ripen soon.
Change not a clout (
winter garment
)
Till May be out.

If the oak is out
Before the ash,
There'll be a summer
Of wet and splash.

If a cow beast scratch her ear,
Stormy weather's very near.

(April 28, 1884–June 9, 1956)

The youngest child of Scottish immigrant parents, Edith Summers was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. By the age of thirteen, she had sold her first story to a local newspaper. She received a scholarship to attend the University of Toronto and graduated with honors in 1903.

Eager to pursue her ambitions as a writer, she moved to New York City, settled in Greenwich Village, and took her first job on the staff of Funk & Wagnall's
Standard Dictionary.
In 1905, she answered a newspaper ad and began work as secretary to novelist Upton Sinclair, author of
The Jungle.
She eventually joined his experimental commune in New Jersey, a place which attracted a number of writers and thinkers—including Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Sinclair Lewis. When fire destroyed their communal home, Helicon Hall, Summers returned to Greenwich Village and supported herself by writing stories and poems for magazines. After breaking her engagement with Sinclair Lewis, she married his roommate and friend, Allan Upderdraff, in 1908. They had two children, a daughter and a son, before divorcing three years later.

Soon after she began to live with sculptor C. Fred Kelley, they moved in 1914 to a seven hundred-acre tobacco farm in Scott County, Kentucky, a farm they rented and planned to manage, though they knew little about tobacco farming. There, where she lived as a tenant farmer—“in a three-room tenant shack”—she received the inspiration for her novel,
Weeds.

After several financially unsuccessful farming ventures and the birth of another son, the family moved to Imperial Valley, California. She began writing
Weeds
and contacted Sinclair Lewis, who helped her to secure his own publisher for her manuscript. She never found in California the supportive community of writers and intellectuals that had surrounded her in the East, but she remained in California until her death.

Though
Weeds
received favorable reviews from well-known critics, its sales were never good. Kelley attributed the poor sales to weak promotions and to American readers' tastes, which preferred romantic stories to “realistic” ones. Rediscovered in the 1970s and praised for its feminist themes, the novel focuses on Judith Pippinger, an artistic tomboy in the rural hills of Kentucky, who struggles unsuccessfully to overcome the oppressive roles assigned her as a woman when she becomes a wife and mother.

This scene is from the opening of chapter 3 of
Weeds.

Novels:
The Devil's Hand
(1974),
Weeds
(1923).

Charlotte Margolis Goodman, “Afterword,”
Weeds
(1996). Danny L. Miller, “Mountain Gloom in the Works of Edith Summers Kelley and Anne W. Armstrong,” in
Wingless Flights: Appalachian Women in Fiction
(1996), 53–68.