β Scribed by R. T. Smith
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In the best tradition of southern storytelling, Uke Rivers Delivers features raconteurs as beguiling as the tales they tell. These lyrical, darkly humorous monologues portray a range of denizens of the American South desperately trying to come to grips with their inherited pasts. A Confederate reenactor receives a message from the beyond to lay to rest the remains of Stonewall Jackson's horse. A docent at Washington and Lee University's Lee Chapel offers prim instruction on the facts and legends about "the General" with both reverence and irony. The young son of a lewd, alcoholic, self-dubbed evangelist acquires the wits β and the will β for survival by protecting the family's sunflower crops. A midget ukulele virtuoso is so surprised by his own eruption into violence that he can attribute it only to genetics. One of Jeff Davis's fellow cross-dressers; the killer of John Wilkes Booth; a Rebel deserter whose superior exacts his pound of flesh β all these characters and more, through their twisted and torn vernaculars, seek understanding and revival in R. T. Smith's superb collection.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
It has been said, "nobody knows a poet's alive, until he's dead." And in turn, it has also been said that if there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money. Those of us who write rarely do so for extrinsic worth, for we are compelled by motives which even nature dare not consider. We
Abby Meyers runs the UPS Store on River's End Ranch, and she does a very good job of it, too. Even when it means that she has to interact with people, and that's unfortunate because sometimes people are just . . . too people-y. And that includes Reggie Armstrong, who probably skips through rainstorm