Standing on the Outcrop by Joyce Compton Brown

Joyce Compton Brown writes about real mountains. Hills do not have outcrops!  And, yes, her stance is considering the whole picture, the forest as well as the trees. What she mostly sees are the ordinary people who live down in the valley, and from her vantage point she can sum them up perfectly, telling aptly-crafted and succinct stories that use key incidents in their lives to illuminate both them and their place and telling the stories of the neighborhoods that sometimes nurtured them and sometimes even martyred them. “Like a farmer searching for water, in these poems Joyce Brown delves deeper and deeper into her spirit country between Linville and Honeycutt Mountains. Voice, time, and landscape merge, and the essence of the place is revealed, becomes our spirit country too. Brown is one of our state’s finest poets.”—Ron Rash. “Standing on the Outcrop herself, Joyce Compton Brown looks out over the vast peaks and deep valleys and long swoops of land she knows like the back of her ha