One More River To Cross: The Selected Poetry of John Beecher - Softcover

Beecher, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 158838103X ISBN 13: 9781588381033

Publisher: NewSouth Books, 2003

Synopsis

The late John Beecher, though descended from the abolitionist Beechers, grew up in Birmingham, where his father was a steel industry executive. Beecher himself was groomed for a similar role, but when he went into the mills as a young man during the Great Depression, he rebelled and began to write powerful, radical, activist poetry. A contemporary of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, he became a similar chronicler of the massive human displacement of the economic upheaval of the 1930s. During World War II, he served as an officer of the interracial crew of the troop transport Booker T. Washington, and wrote a book about those experiences. In the McCarthy era, he was blacklisted. And in the civil rights era, he turned his attention to the evils of segregation and the Ku Klux Klan. Always, he wrote powerful, spare verse which in lesser hands might have been ruined by its outrage. With his artist wife, Barbara, he published several elegant collections of his poetry on his own hand-set letterpress. His books included Report to the Stockholders, To Live and Die in Dixie, In Egypt Land, and a 1974 Macmillan edition of collected poems. All are out of print.

About this title

About the Author:

Steven Ford Brown is employed in the European Equities Department of an international investment firm in Boston, and is a writer, editor, and translator. He has edited and translated a number of books, including Astonishing World: The Selected Poems of Angel Gonzalez, 1956-1986.

Review:

Pete Seeger

"You may be one of those people who doesn't read poetry. But if you ever wonder what makes this 228-year-old country great, dip into this book. You won't be able to put it down."

Pete Seeger

"You may be one of those people who doesn't read poetry. But if you ever wonder what makes this 228-year-old country great, dip into this book. You won't be able to put it down."

About this edition

• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 158838103X
• ISBN 13: 9781588381033
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254
• Editor: Brown Steven Ford