Customer Reviews

No Lonesome Road: SELECTED PROSE AND POEMS

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After so many years of being out of print, here is an amazing collection of essays, stories and poems by one of Appalachia's true legends. Don West was really one of the most unique voices to come out of the mountains. As this collection wonderfully describes, he served at the forefront of so many early battles in the labor, civil rights, and folk movements: the unknown movements before the movements. His poems and stories also turned the hackneyed stereotypes of hillbillies on their heads, detailing the homegrown role of mountaineers in the abolitionist, labor and civil rights movements, and in defending themselves. In fact, I'd say Don West was Appalachian before it was cool to be Appalachian, and he was cool to boot.

It's amazing he is so unknown. I hope this great collection, which includes some previously unpublished essays and stories, will get a wide reading among students and young people in the South and Appalachia, and among readers and activists in general.

I highly recommend this book. And I agree that it is long overdue in coming out. It stands as a fine contribution to the literature of the South, especially the Mountain South, in giving a portrait of an overlooked tradition of radical activism in the region. West's writing is strong, often preachy, but clearly in tune with the social justice movements of his times. This book is a good companion to SPEAK NOW AGAINST THE DAY, a great book on the generation in the South before the civil rights movements, of which West was a critical player.

I was assigned this book for a class and found it a great read. West was sort of the Woody Guthrie poet of his times. Coming from the South, and Appalachia, he was also a rare voice for racial unity and a defender of the working man in the 1930s, a position that cost him a number of jobs and led to attacks by the Klan. Overall, I found his work to be really inspiring, even today.

There is a strange review below that calls West a beat poet. I don't know what that reviewer is referring to. The beats were an entirely different movement, in another time, and another place. The review is quite odd, actually, and out of place and disses a man who gave his life to the cause of social justice.

I highly recommend this book. And I agree that it is long overdue in coming out. It stands as a fine contribution to the literature of the South, especially the Mountain South, in giving a portrait of an overlooked tradition of radical activism in the region. West's writing is strong, often preachy, but clearly in tune with the social justice movements of his times. This book is a good companion to SPEAK NOW AGAINST THE DAY, a great book on the generation in the South before the civil rights movements, of which West was a critical player.

No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose And Poems collects the work of Appalachian poet and activist Don West (1906-1992) well known as a labor organizer, organic farmer, preacher, cofounder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, found of the Appalachian South Folklife Center in West Virginia, and more. Crossing five decades in West's literary career, No Lonesome Road offers poems from each of West's collections, key prose selections, and a newly recovered chapbook. Co-edited by a long-time personal associate of Don West, No Lonesome Road offers thoughtful, lively, and insightful vignettes of inspiration that call the reader to personal and community action, and is highly recommended.

Beat poetry was the low point of American literature. Don West failed at even being a mediocre beat poet, his work survives only to feed the egos of his heirs. Better work is produced every day with the Magnetic Poetry tiles at your local Starbucks.
One star is two too many, but that's as low as Amazon allows.