Contents

Rank Stranger

I

Index of Canticles

A. P. Carter v. Sara Carter, 1932

Dead Man’s Tuning

Strings

Knoxville Boy

Recitatives on a Murder

Ann Foster Melton Speaks from Her Deathbed

Tom Dula Speaks from the Gallows

Perlene Foster Speaks from the Kitchen

Laura Foster Speaks from the Grave

The Girl Singer

Barn Dance (Road Show)

Barn Dance (Costume)

Barn Dance (Chorus)

Barn Dance (Cousin Emmy Remembers Her Show Car)

Maybelle Carter on Singing Hillbilly Boogie with Sara, ca. 1963

On Seeing a Letter Patsy Cline Wrote to Nudie the Tailor

Rebel Girl (Hazel Dickens)

I saw Bobby Bare kiss Marty Stuart

I Will Always Love You

Love in the Cold War

II

Poem in My Grandmother’s Voice

Pentecost 1965

The only way out

My Grandmother’s Sewing Notions

Once

Vocal School

War Story

Minor Detour through an Old Knoxville Neighborhood

James Brown Performs “Cold Sweat” on American Bandstand, 1968

Slow Dance

Corvus

Thanksgiving Eve

Herons on the Holston

Gallows Humor

Sevens

Paralysis

My Maternal People

Kitchen Waltz

Tree Rings

III

Ballad

To Sing and Sing Again

The Chief Things of the Ancient Mountains

The Full Corn Moon

Gravity Sonnet

Roll Call (A Dissimulation of Birds)

Lone Crow Daddy Spends His Afternoon Setting Up a Carnival

Small-Town Gossip

My Grandmother’s Dog Song

Bounty

Barn Swallows

Put Upon by Grief

Gospel Song

Sorrow Lets Loose for a Moment

Offal & Bones

Oh, Groundhog!

Mapmaker

Notes and Acknowledgments