The Appalachian Sea - (Southern Messenger Poets) by Steve Scafidi (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Appalachian Sea, a new book of poems by Steve Scafidi, started as an homage to the painter Miles Cleveland Goodwin but morphed into a celebration of the spectral qualities of place and home. The Shenandoah wends through these poems. Old farmers die by suicide and ghosts wander the land as change comes on like a flood. The flooded river, the Appalachian Sea, moves through the mountains like time and there is no escape from the turning and yet for a while we survive. That getting-by, that pause of survival, however temporary, makes what surrounds us beloved and strange. These poems sing of the beloved and strange nature of home. The gothic imagery of Goodwin's work, where a country church is painted black as a hole in the earth and skeletons hold hands on a hillside, speaks of the weirdness of childhood, where mythology and danger might assume living form. Isn't the Imagination formed of such things? In Scafidi's poems, snakes fall from the sky and caterpillars "like little dragons" eat a catalpa tree down to nothing. The story of a Great Flood that is murderous and holy is as old as Gilgamesh, and to live by a river anywhere is to sense that elemental force. Appalachia has always been a place of mountains and story, of rivers and magic, as well as an ordinary place where people work, live, and die. These poems in The Appalachian Sea aim to capture some of what that force is"-- Provided by publisher

Book Synopsis

A New York Public Library Best Book of 2025

Steve Scafidi's The Appalachian Sea explores the eponymous place of mountains and story, of rivers and magic, as well as of mortality, where people work and live and die. What began as an homage to the American painter Miles Cleveland Goodwin became a celebration of the spectral qualities of place and home. The artist's gothic imagery of haints and dark orchards haunts the book, wherein the Shenandoah wends, old farmers toil, and ghosts wander a land where change comes on like a flood. There is no escape from this spilling river, the "Appalachian sea," yet for a while we get by and survive. These poems sing of the temporary persistence that makes what surrounds us beloved and strange.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR STEVE SCAFIDI
"[Here is] a poet long since come into his own but still growing and restless in the burgeoning of his enormous talent. Surpassing--or encompassing--Scafidi's technical virtuosity, fertile imagination, and lyric sensibility, the poet's great gift is empathy for his subject and for his reader. . . . Every Scafidi poem reveals a surprise."

--Southern Humanities Review

"In Scafidi's universe, it's alright to be a little off-center, because it is in the common, in the everyday, that he finds dignity and communion."--Library Journal

"Scafidi's poetry . . . musically and vividly reminds readers that creation is full of delights both large and small. It reminds us that life is short, that death is inevitable, and that the only mature responses to these hard facts are to be aware of beauty, meaning, pleasure, to take nothing for granted, to care deeply, and celebrate while we can."--Appalachian Journal

About the Author

Steve Scafidi is the author of the poetry collections Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer, For Love of Common Words, The Cabinetmaker's Window, and To the Bramble and the Briar. He works as a cabinetmaker and lives with his family in Summit Point, West Virginia.