The Charlotte Observer

POETRY
Of life and the hidden self
Powerful collections from Southern poets explore facets of our mortality

DANNYE ROMINE POWELL

BACK TO CAIN

By Tony Morris. The Olive Press. 82 pages. $14.95.

Life's richness -- and its brevity -- are the stuff of Tony Morris' powerful second collection. And grief, he tells us, is often our spur to seize the moment.

"...I wonder if I'll keep / Believing in that moment when for lack / Of grief, I closed my eyes and fell asleep."

There's also a colorful gallery of poems based on stories told by two Appalachian quilters, each of whose lives underscores the book's early lines: "...the ebb of currents on the sand,/ white-boned shells that rattle out to sea."

Morris is managing editor of Southern Poetry Review in Savannah, Ga.

Dannye Romine Powell
September, 2006

Provincetown Arts

Back to Cain
Olive Press, 2005

John E. Smelcer, co-judge of the National Poetry Series, poetry editor of Rosebud.

Seeing a title like Back to Cain, by a Southern poet from the buckle of the Bible Belt, I expected something altogether different from Tony Morris's first collection. I was pleased to discover its eclecticness. Certainly, as the title suggests, there are a great many allusions to biblical stories and characters. This is not a criticism but an observation.

Instead, this is a collection of quiet and mature poems of the rarest kind: poems written by a good man, honest and kind and unassuming. There is no pretension. They are observant poems—observant of form and structure, of the everyday, and astutely aware of nature, a one can see in these lines from "Sometimes Shadows":

                           tide pools fill
and empty, and a heron stalks between the sea

          and shore, snatching silver-bellied fish
                        as crabs scuttle sideways to their holes

This awareness of nature can be seen as well in these final lines from "Passing Water":

                           While out in the stillness,

the sound of crickets, frogs, whippoorwills echoed
from the dark stand of pines.

In his poems that evoke closeness to the natural world, Morris's sensibilities are akin to the best poets in the tradition.

All of the poems in Back to Cain conform to a tight regiman, like stoic soldiers—Pharoah's perhaps—marching in cadence. And although I generally don't admire contemporary poetry enslaved to the old forms, Morris has mastered them well--they read effortlessly, belying the hard work required in writing them. Indeed, the namesake of the collection, "Back to Cain through Memphis," is a gorgeous, richly spun poem written in evenhanded quatrains.

As a whole, the collection holds together well, balanced and uniform in its mastery. Back to Cain is a superb first book.

Joh E. Smelcer
Summer, 2006

The Raleigh News & Observer


Poet finds life in the moment

By BRIDGETTE A. LACY, Staff Writer

Tony Morris worked in a paper factory for 10 long years before he decided to attend college. When he was young, Morris associated writing with penmanship and thought he wasn't good at either. He was in his early 30s when he began to pursue higher education and other work opportunities. While earning his bachelor's degree, Morris discovered he enjoyed poetry. Later, he settled on poetry as a career.

Morris will read from his first collection, "Fugue's End," at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Regulator Bookshop and Cafe in Durham. The chapbook sells for $14.

Morris is an assistant professor of English at Armstrong-Atlantic State University in Savannah, Ga., and the winner of the North Carolina Writer's Network 2004 Mary Belle Campbell Poetry Book Publication Award.

His poems reflect some of his Appalachia background; he grew up in the mountains of Georgia and Kentucky. He uses words to paint pictures of the mountains, the changing seasons of nature and life, and glimpses of aunts, uncles and country cousins.

Nature plays a big role in the way I approach my view on life," Morris says.

He takes special inspiration from hawks, which he says are emblematic of a freedom found in nature that man can no longer feel. Man is burdened by the anxiety that comes from knowing one's own mortality, he says. People overanalyze.

"When a hawk flys overhead and dives down to snatch a rabbit, if he misses the rabbit, it's beautiful, and terrifying--it's not a failure," Morris says.

Morris likes to use nature as a way to explore "who we are as humans."

Consider his poem Winter's Edge":

March creeps in a restless God -- vagrant,

indecisive -- winter gusts that barely

lift the moist, dead leaves, while bulbs,

lethargic under darkness, wait for spring.

Across the stubbled field behind my house,

a red-rust tractor sits silent, brooding

like a brown mule left standing in a trace,

while overhead, a broad-winged hawk circles.

Morris says he loves the starkness of that winter. "I like the sadness that comes with death. That sorrow of fall and winter brings us closer to and understanding of both the temporality and continuity of life. It's beautiful for me."

Every Tuesday in April, which is National Poetry Month, the Regulator Bookshop will host poetry readings starting at 7 p.m.

Staff writer Bridgette A. Lacy can be reached at 829-8925 or blacy@newsobserver.com
March, 2005