A collection of 62 poems, written in Kentucky, Montana and elsewhere. Poems from growing up in Appalachia to hiking, camping and teaching in Montana, and experiencing the world in Spain, Japan and other cultures. Poems celebrating nature, friends, family, music, and dealing with hard earned insights and death, as well as hope for what's unfolding.
Nancy Allen Rose was born on the Carter County, Kentucky, farm and in the bed of her part-Cherokee maternal grandmother, Nancy Elizabeth Blevins Stevens, who doctored people. She was named for “Aunt Nance” and her paternal grandmother, Mary Allen “Molly” Womack Rose, a teacher, artist and musician. Reared in eastern Kentucky, she is a graduate of Prestonsburg schools, and Berea College, with a B.A. in English. She was secretary in the Political Science Department at the University of Kentucky, before returning to Berea to become Dean of Women in the Foundation School.
Deciding to teach full time, Nancy drove a blue VW bug to Montana and discovered that western Montana is a lot like eastern Kentucky … beautiful trees, mountains and people. She loved her students, the magic of teaching, seeing the lights go on via poetry, mythology, science fiction, fantasy, modern media and world literature, and she loved spending time out of doors. She spent a summer in an English Institute at the University of Montana, where she began her graduate study, and a summer in the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop at Hindman, Kentucky, discovering James Still and his River of Earth and Gurney Norman, who took her to the local library to check out the only copy of Divine Right’s Trip.
Nancy has taught in China and traveled in Japan, Spain, the Caribbean and Italy. She has also taught at Flathead Valley Community College and at the University of Montana. Retirement, after 40 years of teaching, provides time to spend with family and friends and in the mountains, as well as on her commitment to complete this book. Some of the poems have appeared in Mountain Life & Work, The Magazine of the Appalachian South and Cut-Thru Review, The Big Sandy Community and Technical College Literary Magazine.
