Bledsoe

Bledsoe, an extended narrative poem that centers on a mute Appalachian man named Durant Bledsoe, takes place in the mountains of Yancey County, North Carolina, in an early part of the 20th century. Durant Bledsoe's mother is dying with a brain tumor and he must take care of her, all the while coming to terms with the fact that she, in her suffering, has asked him to take her life. Bledsoe's vision of the world is refracted through his own suffering--a keen awareness of mortality, that all he sees--not just family, not just the world he knows--must one day give way to something else. This long poem twines the landscape of Appalachia with a man's unusual, radiant mind, wherein readers are privy to his idiosyncratic interpretations of culture, family, religion, and identity.