Jesse Stuart
(1907–1984)

Jesse Stuart celebrated his native region of rural Appalachia in his many poems, stories, and essays.

Stuart was born in 1907 in a one-room log cabin in the tiny community of W-Hollow, Kentucky. Neither of his parents had completed elementary school. Stuart's childhood was divided between part-time schooling and farm chores. His love of literature–especially the poetry of Robert Burns, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman–spurred him on through high school and then to Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, where he graduated in 1929.

Returning to his native region, Stuart served as a teacher and principal in a number of schools. Said critic H. Edward Richardson, "Though he made his living teaching, he was writing whenever he could, not so much because he wanted to, but because he was compelled to." In 1934, he published his first book, a volume of sonnets entitled Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow. The book, which contains more than 700 sonnets, received favorable reviews from several distinguished literary critics of the day.

During his long career, Stuart produced an astonishing amount of writing: more than 55 book-length works, including 500 short stories and 2,000 poems. Stuart wrote in a literary tradition called regionalism, presenting the unique culture of a specific geographical area. For Stuart, this region was Appalachia, a mountainous, largely rural area of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Appalachia is rich in scenery and in local traditions, though many of its people are poor. In his literary works, Stuart often used a technique called local color, including characters, dialect, and other details that are unique to the region he knew so well.

Stuart published his best-known volume of poems, Album of Destiny, in 1944. Two of the writer's major themes are especially prominent in this work: his admiration for his pioneer ancestors and the disturbing contrast between rural life of the past and "citified" life of the present. Stuart believed deeply in the vital link between human beings and nature. He felt that urban life of the twentieth century separated people from one of their greatest sources of strength. You will recognize echoes of this theme in Stuart's short story "Eighty-One Summers," which was published in 1959.

In 1960 and 1961, Stuart served as a visiting professor of English and education at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. During his career, he also worked as a lecturer for the United States Information Service, visiting Iran, Greece, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Korea.

Although he focused on a small, specific region in almost all his writing, Stuart's works won an international audience, and his books have been translated into many foreign languages. Writer Hal Borland commented on Stuart and his work: "Early, Stuart was regarded as a regional writer. That was a superficial judgment. He always was broader than any region, and his regional accents were used for a purpose …. And he has come to accept and celebrate the humanity of people, even to cherish it." Stuart's vivid pictures of human life and emotions make his writing relevant to readers around the country and the world.

Stuart received many honors for his writing. In 1954, he was named Poet Laureate of the state of Kentucky, and in 1961 he was honored by the Academy of American Poets for his "distinguished service to American poetry." In the later part of his career, he published several autobiographical works; one of these, entitled The Thread That Runs So True (1949), was named the best book of the year by the National Education Association.

Critic Ruel E. Foster once said the following of Jesse Stuart: "He has created a place and wedged it everlastingly in the imagination of America. His stories have given a voice to the far and lost land of the Appalachians, a voice which calls us ever and delightedly into the outdoor world." Stuart died in Ironton, Ohio, in 1984.

In Stuart's story "The Blacksnake's Operation," a father teaches his daughter about the rhythms of nature. Both the blacksnake and the frog that it catches have their own special position in the environment, carrying out functions that help to keep nature in balance.

Ecology is the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environment. Although it is a relatively young science, ecology has offered many insights into the balance of nature. In the United States, for example, predators such as wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes were often persecuted in the past as dangerous pests. We now know that these animals play an important role in their regional environments, or ecosystems, helping to keep populations of deer and other species stable.

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