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VOICES FROM THE AMERICAN LAND Volume II, Number 3 EVERY BREATH SINGS MOUNTAINS Brent Martin Barbara Reimensnyder Duncan Thomas Rain Crowe The Great Smoky Mountains Every BreathSings Mountains is the seventh Land, and the first issue to include more than a single poet's response to aland- scape. BrentMartin, Barbara Reimensnyder Duncan, andThomas Rain Crowejoin their unique and distinctivevoices to praise South- ernAppalachia's GreatSmokyMountains —and to lamentwhat's been lost. Together with RobertJohnson's deceptivelysimple line drawings, the poems describe a landscape ofoutstandingbiological diversity and rich human history. These are old mountains, theirgranite and gneiss and limestone thrust up many millions ofyears ago and eroded bywind andwater to the round-shouldered, oak-covered ridges of today. Sheltered alongthose forested flanks and amongthe creek-rivenvalleys are people whose cultures and traditions havegrown directlyfrom their long-standingrelationship with the land. Cherokee names grace the landscape and call to mind awayofbeing where, as Barbara Duncanwrites, "all is known, all is respected, all is used, all is part." Itis this sense ofconnectedness thatempow- ers the strand ofstewardship embraced in the region bymanyold and new residents, old and newgenerations. Partcelebration, partlamentation, partcall to action, this collection ofpoems and the commentarythatconcludes itoffer a fierce expression oflove, and highlightthe delicate dance between natural richness and human desire in a landscape of extraordinarydiversity. EVERY BREATH SINGS MOUNTAINS Ta.\\ EVERY BREATH SINGS MOUNTAINS Brent Martin Barbara Reimensnyder Duncan Thomas Rain Crowe Introduction by Anthony Hunt Voices from the American Land Volume IL Number 3 Voices from the American Land A ChapbookSeries Editorial Board: Summer Wood, Renny Golden, Anthony Hunt John Orne Green, Dorothy B. Bowen AdvisoryCouncil: Darlene Chandler Bassett, Wendell Berry Charles E. Little, Gary Snyder, George F Thompson VOLUME NUMBER II 3 Issue Editor: Anthony Hunt Book Design: Dorothy B. Bowen Illustrations: RobertJohnson ThischapbookhasbeenbroughttopublicationwiththehelpofgenerousgrantsfromtheConserva- tionandResearchFoundation,theMicrosoftCorporation,andthePleasantT.RowlandFoundation, andcontributionsfromSabraJaneBasler,DarleneChandlerBassett,KarenE. Bowen, DonnaBowyer, WhitneyBuck, PatriciaF.Clark, PaulA.Clement,RobertandJoanCone, LowellDodge, Kathleen A.Gehrt,AndrewGottlieb,ConnieandTomGreen,JohnOrneGreen,JanetHampton,AvaS. Hayes,NormanandJanHeise,BeverlyJackson,KennethJ. Lewis,CharlesE.Little,CarolynS.Loeb, OrieandElinorLoucks,PatriciaMaida,AllenK.Mears,MichaelMilone, PatriciaMonaghan,AnnK. Morales,WilliamMurray,NuryaParish,SusanGrantRaymond,WallaceH. RoweIII,JamesLeeRuzicka, DavidSampson,RobertSmithandEileenBlau,JaneC.Sprague,AndrewM.Traldi,HughWitemeyer, DawnE.Wolf,andothermembersoftheVoicesAssociatesProgram. VoicesfromtheAmericanLandchapbooks(ISSN: 1944-1479)arepublishedbyTheCenterforthe StudyofPlace,Inc.,anon-profit,tax-exempt501(c)(3)organization.MembershipinVoicesAssociates, whichsupportspublication,beginsat$50andincludesanannualsubscription.Thosecontributing $100ormorearelistedonthemastheadduringtheirtermofmembership.Librarysubscription:$60 forthreeissues.Singlecopies:$13.50postpaid,domestic. Bulkordersof 10ormoreareavailable at$6.00percopyplusshippingandhandling.Seewww.voicesfromtheamericanland.orgforfurther information.Contents©2011 byTheCenterfortheStudyofPlace, Inc. Voices fromtheAmerican Land P.O. Box 1297 NM Taos, 87571 [email protected] " " "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand CountyAlmanac (1949) viii. "Nature is not a place to visit, it is home. - Gary Snyder, The Practice ofthe Wild(1990) 1. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://archive.org/details/everybreathsingsOOcrow