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Published October 25, 2013.
196 pp., 70 illustrations, afterword, notes, works cited
ISBN 978-0-9842102-2-0
$20 retail Buy it!
designed by Eva Roberts
The Mule Poems, by A.R. Ammons
Seven of Archie Ammons' mule poems collected in a limited letterpress edition of 200 copies.
illustrations by Joan Mansfield
designed by Eva Roberts
$12
Behind the Names: Pitt County Schools
by Steven A. Hill
Brief biographical sketches of the namesakes of 11 public schools in Pitt County NC: Rose, Conley, Bundy, Aycock, Eppes, WHitfield, Saulter, Robinson, Wahl-Coates, Sugg, and Cox
ISBN: 978-0-9842102-1-3
$5
Distributed by R.A. Fountain
R.A. Fountain is the sole distributor of books originally published by North Carolina Wesleyan College Press
Ammons, A.R.
The North Carolina Poems
ISBN 0-933598-51-3
120 pp, 1994. with an Afterword by Alex Albright
$35
Four copies remain of this out-of-print edition. Because of its collectibility, Broadstone Books in Kentucky published a new and expanded edition in 2010. Both books have different Afterwords, and some poems from the NC Wesleyan College edition have been replaced and a few others added to the Broadstone Books edition. Because both books were designed by Jonathan Greene, they also look identical, except for their back blurbs, ISBNs, and publisher's names. Greene designed many of NC Wesleyan College Press's books.
The price quoted is for one copy only; price is subject to change according to availability. One additional copy, autographed by Ammons, is also available.
Anderson, Louise
Three by Louise Anderson
Three unusual & collectible Louise Anderson items, all published by NC Wesleyan College Press in commemoration of events involving the noted storyteller.
$10 for all 3
Item 1
The 'Possum and the Snake & The Walk-off People
8 pp, 1993, 11" x 4.25", softbound, light purple binding, stapled.
1000 copies were printed in celebration of Ms. Anderson's receiving the NC Folk Heritage Award, 10 June 1993. Except for three of her stories published in the North Carolina Literary Review (Spring 1993), this is the only publication of her work. The first story is a folk tale in the tradition of Aesop with the moral at the end, "If it looks like a snake. . . " Or, "Don't you never trouble Trouble, lessen Trouble troubles you." The second tale is a creation story that details the making of all races. The "walk-off people" are those that wandered away before God was able to give them brains. "They say a whole lot of 'em, a disproportional number of 'em, went into politics," Anderson concludes.
Item 2
Louise Anderson, Storyteller
2 pp, 1990, 5.5" x 8.5," black ink printed on off-white paper.
This item, about the size and format of a church bulletin, has two inner pages of autobiographical text written by Ms. Anderson. It was published by NC Wesleyan College Press in an edition of 500 to commemorate the author's reading at NCWC on September 13, 1990: "I was born in Bogart, Georgia, in 1921, the fourth child of John and Bertha Davenport Anderson, and the second child to live. My family moved to High Point, North Carolina, in 1924," it begins. And it concludes: "I have been happy in a world of inequitable opportunities because I was taught that no one was my inferior--consequently no one was my superior. So, 'How do you do President Bush?' Yet it is my duty to bring beauty and make things equal. Have a few laughs. too."
Item 3
Photograph of the author by Roger Manley.
5.5" x 8.5," postcard stock.
Published on the occasion of Anderson's performance at NC Wesleyan College on November 7, 1989.
Anderson, who died in 1994, played the role of Dark Sally in Tom Davenport's film "Ashpet: An American Cinderella," and she was the subject of Davenport's 2000 documentary "When My Work Is Over." She received the NC Folk Heritage Award in 2003. Folkstreams.net streams several excellent short documentary films of Anderson telling tales and talking about her life.
Boer, Charles
Charles Olson in Connecticut
ISBN 0-933598-28-9
Introduction by Fielding Dawson
144 pp., 1991
$16
trade paperback reprint of 1975 Swallow Press edition.
Charles Boer was Olson's literary executor and with the late George Butterick edited the final volume of the Maximus Poems. Choice called this book, about Olsonรฦ's brief visit to Connecticut in 1969 "often amusing, occasionally quizzical, at times boisterous, but never dull. . . [T]he reader is almost convinced that he or she is present in Connecticut with Olson."
Boyd, William L.
Poetic Penguins
ISBN 0-933598-36-x
Trade Paperback, 1st ed.
113 pp, 1992, limited edition of 526 copies
$12
Cover illustration by Clyde Jones, afterword by Arthur Mann Kaye, photographic portrait on back cover by Roger Manley
Outsider poems by the late Mr. Boyd, of Rocky Mount, NC. Part I: Sixty-Four Poems of the Penguins' Animated Tuxedos. Part II: Twenty-One Sonnets of the Penguins' Other Tuxedo.
Sparrow wrote of these poems: "Boyd's curious vocabulary, excessive word play, puns, skewed syntax, and almost total avoidance of visual imagery set this work apart from any religious verse I have ever seen -- indeed, from any poetry I have seen, for Boyd's is impossible to classify. He employs such traditional forms as the ode, ballad, and sonnet, but the poems are anything but conventional." His poetry "often resembles the cut-up poems of Tristan Tzara; he is attempting, as were the early twentieth-century cubists and dadaists, to convey an inner sense, rather than an outer form, of reality. "Boyd also represents "the human voice in his poetry, the speech cadences of African-American Evangelical preaching."
Dawson, Fielding.
The Black Mountain Book
ISBN 0-933598-20-3.
Trade paperback, new edition
251 pp, 1991.
$18
Originally published in 1970 by Duke University Press, this new edition of Dawson's classic memoir of his Black Mountain days "contains twice as much material as the original text, as well as documents from Dawson's years at Black Mountain (1949-53): photographs, drawings, letters, poems, class notes."
Dawson, Fielding, Paul Metcalf, and Michael Rumaker
3 x 3
ISBN 0-933598-12-2
Trade paperback 1st edition
69 pp, 1989
$10
Three prose pieces by BMC masters, including excerpts from Metcalf's "Mountaineers are Always Free" and Rumaker's BMC memoir "Pagan Days," and Dawson's short story "War."
Flint, Roland
Pigeon
ISBN 0-933598-30-0
Trade paperback, 1st edition
62 pp, 1991
$6
Roland Henry Flint (Feb. 27, 1934 - Jan. 2, 2001) was born in River Park River, ND. He was an English professor at Georgetown University for 30 years and the poet laureate of Maryland from 1995-2000. His papers are housed at the University of Maryland.
Two of his nine collections of poems were published by NC Wesleyan College Press; others, by LSU Press, the Dial Press, Dryad Press, and Unicorn.
He Didn't Know He was A
Pigeon: until the day in New York City
When he'd left the rented nest & her
He's often called a nest & was walking,
Bad hungover from the pre-wedding bash
To his favorite Wolf's (52nd & 7th)
For bagel, egg & aspirin,
And his path was blocked by
Pigeons & then just one,
Fat, rumpled, grouchy, clumsy,
And he & the pigeon did
A little dance before finding
The paths around, & he thought,
Oh God, I danced like that last night
At the fancy dinner, dressed just
Like a pigeon in the rented tux,
Colliding with the bride's mother,
Saying some dumb pigeon-yiddish, & pigeon
Dancing, drunk & bumbling,
Strumbling by: pigeon, plain
As pigeon.
Flint, Roland
Sicily
ISBN 0-933598-03-3
Chapbook
23 pages, 1987
$4
A collection of nine poems published on the occasion of the first Eleanor Hoyt Smith Memorial Reading at NC Wesleyan College, 16 October 1987, in an edition of 1,000 copies.
Kaye, Arthur Mann, ed.
Good Country People: An Irregular Journal of the Cultures of Eastern North Carolina
ISBN 0-933598-41-6
Trade paperback, 1st edition
134 pp, 1995
$10
this followup to Arthur Mann Kaye's collection of essays, "The Coastal Plains," was one of NC Wesleyan College Press's last titles. It includes Tom Patterson's essay on Mrs. Way's Museum in Belhaven, NC; Milton Quigless' memoir of his two weeks spent on the Rabbit's Foot Minstrels in 1922; and Alex Albright's essay on Silas Green from New Orleans and Winstead's Mighty Minstrels. Also lots of previously unpublished photos from African-American traveling vaudeville shows.
Kaye, Arthur Mann, and Les Garner, eds.
Coastal Plains: Writings on the Cultures of Eastern North Carolina
ISBN 0-933598-13-0
Trade paperback, 1st edition
152 pp, 1989.
$10
An exceptional collection of essays on this neglected region, with contributions by Robert Lynch, Jonathan Williams, Roger Manley, Alex Albright, Linda Flowers and others.
Gurganus, Allan
Blessed Assurance
ISBN 0-933598-17-3
Hardback, 1st ed., signed and illustrated by the author
86 pages, 19XX
Oppenheimer, Joel
Ghost Lover
Chapbook, 4"x7" 15 pp., 1983.
Limited edition of 500 published by the enigmatic Mr. Arthur Mann Kaye to commemorate a visit to the North Carolina Wesleyan College campus by the poet.
New, Joan Cockerell
The River Bend
ISBN 0-933598-44-0
Trade paperback, 1st edition
54 pages, 1993
$3
Joan Cockerell New, who earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College, is also the author of "Knocking Down Pears," which was published by Nightshade in 1990.
Rumaker, Michael
Gringos and Other Stories: A New Edition
ISBN 0-933598-26-2
Trade Paperback, revised & expanded edition of collection originally published by Grove Press in 1967
Introduction by Russell Banks, afterword by Robert Creeley.
286 pp, 1991.
$13
This edition includes six new stories and the essay "The Use of the Unconscious in Writing."รย Russell Banks calls these stories "frighteningly simple and direct, as accessible as a kick in the shins."
Rumaker, Michael
Gringos and Other Stories: A New Edition
ISBN 0-933598-27-0
Hardback cloth cover, signed by the author, limited edition of 200
286 pages, 1991.
$25
Rumaker, Michael
To Kill a Cardinal
ISBN 0-9632962-2-1
Trade paperback
168 pp, 19xx
$10
Officially published by the enigmatic Arthur Mann Kaye but distributed by NC Wesleyan College Press.
Rumaker graduated with honours from Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1955 and earned his MFA in writing fiction from Columbia University in 1969. He is the author of 16 books.
Of "To Kill a Cardinal," Stan Leventhal wrote, "With the precision of a surgeon, Rumaker exposes the soft underbelly of institutionalized religion, while creating a vivid tableau of New York City's various counter-cultures." Richard Hall called it "the Canterbury Tales in reverse for the furious queer '90s."
Smith, Leverett T.
Art and Education at Black Mountain College 1933-1956
Oversize paperback, stapled
34 pp, 1978.
$5
Catalog of Black Mountain College-related photographs, manuscripts, art, and books, much of which was acquired by North Carolina Wesleyan College when it purchased the college's library from Charles Olson as it closed in 1957. The exhibit was organized by Smith and ran from January 15 to February 28, 1978 at the Rocky Mount Arts and Crafts Center.
Includes 7 photographs and a previously unpublished poem by Joel Oppenheimer, "A Round."
Smith, Leverett T.
1946: Minor League Baseball in Rocky Mount, NC
Introduction by Joel Oppenheimer, with a poem by Arthur Mann Kaye
Paperback, 9" x 6"
24 pp, 1979
$4
Privately printed by the author, a longtime English professor at NC Wesleyan College, before he founded the college's press.
This rare little book is comprised of three short articles by Smith:
"Professional Baseball in Rocky Mount: The '46 Rocks"
"1946: Bill Kennedy's Fabulous Year"
"Stories Pertaining to Local Negro Baseball in the Rocky Mount Evening Telegram April 24-Dec 31, 1946"
The Rocks played in the whites-only Coastal Plains League along with teams from New Bern, Fayetteville, Goldsboro, Kinston, Tarboro and Greenville. They won 9 of their last 11 games and the league playoffs, too, with left-handed pitcher Bill Kennedy leading the way with a 28-3 record.
The Rocky Mount Black Swans competed in the East Carolina Negro baseball league, with the Raleigh Giants, Littleton Brays, Durham Eagles, Kinston Greys, Goldsboro Blue Sox, South Hill Spiders, and teams from Warrenton and Charlotte. The Black Swans played the Spiders for the league championship, but, alas, the Telegram didn't report the results!
Williams, Jonathan
Le Garage Ravi de Rocky Mount
ISBN 0-933598-06-8
Paperback first edition
4 pp, 1988
<$4>
Essay with color photo covers of artist and his work, published on the occasion of the Annie Hooper Exhibition and Visionary Folk Art Symposium at North Carolina State University, 23 April 1988.