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The Pride and Prejudice of Don West

I spent several years obsessed with resurrecting the legacy of a largely dismissed Appalachian poet-activist. Not entirely dismissed: In 1946, Don West became a national literary phenomenon, managing to sell untold thousands of copies of a collection of quatrain folk ballads and labor poems, Clods of Southern Earth, which should have forever etched him a place in the literary canons of the region. Truth is, during the years I researched West’s wiles, interviewed associates, and collected his papers from the remote corners of the hills and hollows and urban back warrens— most of West’s personal papers had been lost in a series of mysterious fires— I was more in turmoil about how to deal with his hard times and its relevance today than his forgotten life. In the fall of 1999, seven years after Don had died, his books had gone out of print (and it grieved me that the generation of Appalachian scholars, activists, publishers, editors, and writers that came of age in his shadow had shamefully allowed his work to stay out of print for well over a decade), and his legacy had disappeared into the mountain fog; I embarked on a journey with one question: Does Don West still matter to Appalachia, and the nation? I first met West in the early summer of 1983. I was 19, a dropout from the University of California. I had just gone through a wild ninemonth tour of duty in Berkeley’s corridors, spending more time in jail and at leftist political meetings than in classrooms. I failed to finish my last quarter. Returning from a stint in jail for a demonstration in central California, I was involved in a tragic car accident, which resulted in the death of a young woman. I was at the wheel. Still in a daze, I eventually took a Greyhound across the country, and then started hitching and hiking through the South, drifting into the Blue Ridge. I was angry, resentful, and adrift. I had lost faith in the power of education, politics, or even activism. Don West saved my life that summer.