This book introduces to the Norton imprint a new poet with a strong original voice. Robert Morgan writes out of the central tradition of American poetry. His lyrics, rooted though they are in the specifics of the everyday--in earth and leaves, lakes and stones--reach through and beyond these to transcendence, to mystery; they intertwine animate and inanimate, inner and outer, idea and object. As David Kalstone puts it, Morgan is "faithful to the natural facts and yet so aware of the mysterious instincts which allow us in the first place to see, hear, observe such facts."

Robert Morgan, a native of the North Carolina mountains and a widely published poet, has been writing essays about his craft for more than twenty years. This book brings together some of his most thought-provoking pieces, reflections upon poetry from the dual perspective of poet and critic. Morgan begins by examining in succinct and challenging essays the elements of poetry and poetry writing in general, emphasizing the poet's responsibility to provide, as the title suggests, "good measure". Good measure, Morgan cautions, means neither facile spontaneity nor the sort of politicization that...

The unfading poetic brilliance of Robert Morgan shines through these ninety-three pieces spanning thirty-five years. Celebrated for his recent fiction, Morgan makes obvious in this volume he was first, and remains foremost, a word-smith of poetic sensibilities - a craftsman of taut, forceful imagery, alert with wonder to the mystery of what lies in plain sight. Like Robert Frost, Morgan takes the natural world as a metaphorical base for human projection. Much of his work is a love song to the Appalachian Mountain terrain and a way of life all but gone: his father speaking in tongues; his...

Ginny, who marries Tom at the turn of the century after her family gives up on her marrying, narrates the story of their life together on her father's farm in the North Carolina mountains. Although Ginny's story is remote from today, its rendering of the nature of marriage is timeless and universal. .

This book defines interpretation and examines the special issues that surround biblical interpretation. The authors analyze the development of traditional literary and historical criticism and more recent social, scientific, and literary approaches, focusing on the key figures from Reimarus to Gerd Theissen, and exposing the underlying theological issues. They reveal a pattern in the relationship between religious interests in the texts and the rational methods used to interpret them, providing guidance for a theologically sensitive use of the Bible today. The book includes an annotated index...

First order of business for the pioneer was finding their way. After that came marking, then clearing, and finally paving that way. Axing wilderness inroads inch-by-inch, linking settlement with settlement--this was the challenge. "The Hinterlands" is the story of a famly who found, marked, and paved their way into America's eastern frontier. Unfolding the voices of three generations of mountaineer storytellers who specialize in keeping listeners on the edge of their seats, this is fiction that plunks us down right into the thick of pioneer life.