All Posts By

James Everett Kibler

James Everett Kibler is a novelist, poet, and Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he taught popular courses in Southern literature, examining such figures as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Wendell Berry, and Larry Brown. Born and raised in upcountry South Carolina, Kibler spends much of his spare time tending to the renovation of an 1804 plantation home and the reforestation of the surrounding acreage. This home served as the subject of his first book, Our Fathers’ Fields: A Southern Story, for which he was awarded the prestigious Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Nonfiction in 1999 and the Southern Heritage Society’s Award for Literary Achievement.

President Davis in Chains Blog

President Davis in Chains

The lamp was always lit So I could sleep but fitfully They'd let me have no chair And only narrow cot, No screen for chamber pot. My worn and skimpy coat Was all they would alot. In silence I could bear The torture of the lamp, the cold, The oozing damp and mold, But when they ushered in the four…
James Everett Kibler
March 14, 2024
I am the South Blog

I am the South

I AM THE SOUTH (After Padraig Pearse, Mise Eire) I am the South: I am older than Helena's dead. Great my glory: I that bore Jackson and Lee. Great now my shame: My children that bartered a mother. Great now my sorrow: My true sons betrayed. I am the South: I am lonelier than Helena's dead.
James Everett Kibler
February 26, 2024
Rowan Oak, June 1998 Blog

Rowan Oak, June 1998

High circling hawk was clue: This is your home My kinsman true. Allspice bush in cedared yard Gave evidences too Green would and blue, The red-tail, far too far to hear Its brittle cry (But at my hone outside the window high, Persimmon perched, we're eye to eye-- Same hawk, same cry.) I leave the hawk behind And walk the…
James Everett Kibler
February 12, 2024
Monuments Blog

Monuments

Their carven words all testify Of then and now and future time That these were they who kept the cause Was given them by fathers past And living still in coursing blood. They token men True to lineage. To sons they left high honour and the land, A legacy of action speaking still. Let stone forever warn The men who…
James Everett Kibler
July 23, 2021
Contemplation in an Evil Time Blog

Contemplation in an Evil Time

Written in the Year 2021 Hampton, our stalwart Wade,             As wily as Odysseus in warAs full of rage for truth in time of fraud             As any celebrated Greek,He saw his son fall at his feet,             Kissed him a hard farewellIn manner Hector or Odysseus             Would bring to tears,Turned back to battlefield             Which he controlledAs full of righteous angerAs Achilles ever…
James Everett Kibler
April 30, 2021
For Dove and Flag: Grandpa Connelly’s Mules Blog

For Dove and Flag: Grandpa Connelly’s Mules

I hope Grandfather fed them wellFrom out his meager store of cornOr fodder pulled by Mother'Neath a blazing autumn sun--So hot sometimes she saidThat she and sister sickenedTo the vomit stage, and tender armsWere sliced by leaves' fierce razor edge. I know they had warm winter's barnand stabled shelter from both heat and cold.They sometimes got a treat of pea-vine…
James Everett Kibler
February 15, 2021
How Jakob Emig Fought the Yankees Blog

How Jakob Emig Fought the Yankees

From the front porch, Jakob Emig could look across fields where his winter wheat greened nicely. An old man now, with sons gone off to war, he lived mainly in a woman's world of married daughters and daughters-in-law on farms scattered nearby. He himself lived alone, widowed now for two years, hard work during war-time finally having taken its toll…
James Everett Kibler
November 19, 2018
Georgia Scenes Blog

Georgia Scenes

When Georgia Scenes came from an Augusta, Georgia press in 1835, the literary world realized (to varying degrees) that here was a new kind of book. It took a discerning critic like Edgar Allan Poe to recognize so immediately that its “verisimilitude” was an outstanding trait. What was so radically new about the work was its author’s intention not to…
James Everett Kibler
February 7, 2018
Era of the Sow’s Ear Blog

Era of the Sow’s Ear

A Review of My Silk Purse and Yours: The Publishing Scene and American Literary Art by George Garrett, University of Missouri Press, 1992 My Silk Purse is a collection of 36 of George Garrett's essays and re­views, largely on the American publishing and literary scene. The essays are rather tightly a unit, having an underlying philosophy which provides the measure…
James Everett Kibler
February 28, 2017
Geologists Say Blog

Geologists Say

Geologists say Earth’s clay is dust of star. That I believe But not from science chart or learned formulae. Dwarf iris prove it. Blue aster and blue gentian too, Sky-coloured violets By clearest stream, Blue birds’ new spring coats – They’ve brought the heavens down, Have power to reflect, declare All origins.
James Everett Kibler
December 4, 2014
Bounty Review Posts

Bounty

Bullace and scuppernong Wild flavours and perfumes Important among harvests. Wild strawberry and low-bush huckleberry. Perfume of chionanthus and sweetshrub, Better than barter and trade, Sky-song of geese, Pattern of butterfly wings, bearing no bar code – Early remembrance they, Glad of return Renewing the mind, in circling year, Past all beginnings, Beyond all stars.
James Everett Kibler
June 30, 2014
Blue Girl Review Posts

Blue Girl

In swirl of broken lives in flood She stands solitary island In midwinter war eddy – Frail fixed point in blue, Bare-arms purple-blotching with cold. My father saw her there, And holds her in memory, To warm for half century Delicate figure etched in frost Of Alpine snow meadow, Where troop trains Mass and pass unheeding. No notice she seems…
James Everett Kibler
May 5, 2014