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| SUSAN SETTLEMYRE WILLIAMS & MARY LEE ALLEN A Review Triptych This review triptych began as an omnibus examination of books by three women with certain obvious connections. They are writers of the postwar American South who came of age in the early 1960s. They share a deceptive accessibility, a gender, and an historical perspective. A closer reading of these books, however, made clear that to generalize from these commonly held experiences assumed that there was a collective voice for either men or women writing now as “Southern poets.”
Jane Gentry, Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, and Ellen Bryant Voigt, if they are typical of anything, demonstrate the virtues of generous language and precise definition in the diversity employed in the current Southern writer’s use of landscape, family, memory, and grief. This diversity falls like rain on dry soil at a time when the notion of a regional voice in our literature is fading into the accents of CNN anchors and the abbreviated syntax of MySpace. These writers affirm that many of our strongest artists still elect for “a local habitation and a name.” We call their books to your attention and your pleasure. A Review Triptych Contributor’s
notes: Susan Settlemyre Williams
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