Byron Herbert Reese

Byron Herbert Reece (September 14, 1917- June 3, 1958) was the author of four books of poetry and two novels. During his short career he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for “Bow Down in Jericho”, was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1952 & 1957 [ [http://www.gf.org/rfellow.html Guggenheim Fellowships website: Fellows whose last names begin with R] ] , and served as writer-in-residence at the University of California at Los Angeles, Emory University in Atlanta, and Young Harris College in North Georgia. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor Ralph McGill described Reese as "one of the really great poets of our time, and one to stand with those of any other time". Reece never achieved wide recognition and is known today as a poet whose old-fashioned, finely crafted ballads and lyrics celebrate the life and heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Early life

Reece was born in Union County, Georgia near Blood Mountain to Emma and Juan Reece. The Reece family had lived in the area since the early 1800’s and were firmly rooted in the mountain culture. The young Reece, nicknamed "Hub," showed his intelligence early. By the first grade he had read the Bible and John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678), texts that would influence his writing. By the age of fifteen, his poems were being published in the local Blairsville newspaper. After high school he attended nearby Young Harris College, a small, private two-year school, where he found a group of friends who encouraged his poetic development. Reece was not able to stay at college the first time he enrolled due to responsibilities on the family farm. After staying at home to work for three years, he was able to return with a scholarship and permission to alternate quarters between farm work and schoolwork. Despite these accommodations, he never graduated from Young Harris.

Career

In 1943, Reece's poetic exposure took a major step forward when Jesse Stuart, a well-known Kentucky writer, "discovered" him. When Reece's poem, "Lest the Lonesome Bird" appeared in the Prairie Schooner journal, Stuart was intrigued by the ballad skills of the young poet. Stuart asked Reece to show him additional poems and persuaded his publisher, E. P. Dutton, to publish the young Georgian's work. In 1945, Reece's first collection of poems, "Ballad of the Bones and Other Poems", appeared in print and won critical praise. The next ten years were rewarding for Reece. While Ballad of the Bones attracted national attention, "Bow Down in Jericho" (1950) earned Reece a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. Newsweek magazine featured him in its January 1, 1951, issue. Also during this period, Ralph McGill, executive editor (and later, publisher) of the Atlanta Constitution, became a friend of Reece's and an advocate. The first of Reece's two novels, "Better a Dinner of Herbs", was published in 1950. This book and "The Hawk and the Sun" (1955) constitute all of Reece's published fiction, though he apparently was planning to write a trilogy of novels about the settlement of north Georgia, but his final illness prevented that. "Better a Dinner of Herbs" narrates the journey of two brothers down from the mountains to the lowlands. It is an Old Testament story of love, murder, and retribution that takes on the basic tone of the ballad form that dominated Reece's verse. The "Hawk and the Sun" narrates events leading up to a lynching in a small Georgia town. Both novels are distinctive and highly original. Although Reece's final two volumes of poetry, "A Song of Joy" (1952) and "The Season of Flesh" (1955), were also praised, his traditional style was out of step with the Beat Generation and Confessional poetry that dominated the literary world of the 1950’s. Unlike the work of most writers, Reece's poetry showed little change or development in his four volumes; his poetic forms, most notably the ballad and the lyric, his themes, and his point of view seem to have been completely formulated by the time his teenage years ended. Nearly all of Reece's poetry deals with one of five themes: nature, death, love, religion and loneliness. The form of his poems vary from short lyrics, sequences of couplets or quatrains, to sonnets and longer ballads. "I Go by Ways of Rust and Flame" describes the solitude of the individual in nature. Some longer poems concern the traditional content of folk ballads: murder, jealousy, disappointment in love. "Lest the Lonesome Bird", "Ballad of the Rider", and "Ballad of the Weaver" are good examples. Other long poems retell biblical stories: "Ballad of the Bones" recasts the tale of Ezekiel, and a sequence of poems in "Bow Down in Jericho" is about the Old Testament figures of David and Jonathan. One of Reece's most effective expressions of allegiance to his north Georgia region was his poem, "Roads", which compares the relative virtues of life in the city and the country.

Death

Reece's professional success was countered by personal strife—farm life was hard, his mother died of tuberculosis, and his father fell ill with the disease. Reece contracted tuberculosis while caring for his parents. During his final years, Reece also taught classes at Young Harris College to earn extra money. On June 3, 1958, suffering from the ravages of the disease, he ended his life with a bullet at the age of forty. He was found in his college office, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart playing on the record player and his final set of student papers graded and neatly stacked in the desk drawer. Reese is buried in Old Union Cemetery near Young Harris.

Byron Herbert Reece Society

In 2001, Reece was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Two years later the "Byron Herbert Reece Society" was formed, with poet and Reece biographer Dr. Bettie Sellers among its inaugural members. The Reece family farm was acquired by Union County in 2004 and leased to the society, which began work to create a museum and interpretive center commemorating the poet's life and work. In early 2006, the Byron Herbert Reece Interpretive Center received a grant of $671,072 for use on that project.

Legacy

In 2007, Byron Herbert Reece had a resurgence in popularity. He was the star of the 2007 Georgia Literary festival [ [http://www.unionsentinel.com/news/2007/0913/Arts_Leisure/022.html Union County Sentinel: September 13, 2007-2007 Georgia Literary Festival] ] , and he was the featured author and artist in the “Chattahoochee Review”, the literary journal from Georgia Perimeter College [ [http://www.chattahoochee-review.org/ Chattahoochee Review: A Celebration of Byron Herbert Reece] ] . The Spring/summer 2007 issue included previously unpublished poems discovered in the vaults of the University of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Two delicate ink drawings, one of an Eskimo hunter and the other, a rooster at dawn, show a previously unknown talent.

A number of Georgia writers, including Sellers, Terry Kay, and Reece biographer Raymond Cook, gathered at the Reece family farm in June, 2008 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Reece's death. [ [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2464 New Georgia Encyclopedia: Literature-Byron Herbert Reece] ]

"The Reach of Song" is the Georgia State Historical Drama. It is a celebration of mountain heritage that surrounds the life and works of native poet, Byron Herbert Reece. It was performed during the summer for many years on the campus of Young Harris College before moving to the auditorium at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds near Hiawassee. [ [http://www.sos.ga.gov/state_symbols/state_historic_drama.html Georgia Secretary of State website: State Historic Drama] ] [ [http://www.blueridgedigest.com/spring98/s98georgia.html The Blue Ridge Digest: Spring, 1998-"The Reach of Song" dramatizes the story of Georgia’s mountain history] ]

The BRYON HERBERT REECE ACCESS TRAIL connects the Blood Mountain Wilderness to the Appalachian Trail through the Flat Rock Gap. The 7/10th mile trail is considered moderately strenuous. [ [http://georgiatrails.com/trails/byronh.html Georgia Trails.com: Byron Herbert Reece Access Trail] ]

Further Reading

*"Byron Herbert Reece, In Memoriam, I-IV," "Georgia Review" 12 (winter 1958): 357-75.
*Byron Herbert Reece, "Fable in the Blood: The Selected Poems of Byron Herbert Reece", ed. Jim Clark (Athens: *University of Georgia Press, 2002).
*Raymond A. Cook, "Mountain Singer: The Life and Legacy of Byron Herbert Reece", 2d ed. (Atlanta: Cherokee, 1995).
*Mildred Greear, "Meeting Byron Herbert Reece," "Chattahoochee Review" 15 (winter 1995): 39-43.
*Alan Jackson, "Byron Herbert Reece (1917-1958) and the Southern Poetry Tradition" (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).
*Bettie Sellers, "The Bitter Berry: The Life of Byron Herbert Reece" (Atlanta: Georgia Humanities Council, 1992).

References

External links

* [http://www.byronherbertreecesociety.org/ Byron Herbert Reece Society]
* [http://library.yhc.edu/WebReece/index.html The Byron Herbert Reece Digital Library]