Duke professor James Applewhite (pictured) will be reading from his new poetry collection, Quartet for Three Voices, this Saturday, June 1 at 11 a.m. at Fearrington Village. In his new collection, Applewhite integrates personal experience with his wide historical, literary and scientific knowledge to trace the transformation of the South, from the segregated, small-town world of his grandparents’ chicken yard and garden to the contemporary reality of Stealth technology and the Oklahoma City bombing. The poet’s insights alternate between subtle and stark as he meditates on three interrelated themes: the World War II-era absent father; the legacy of racism; and the shift from an agrarian society to a technological one. Representing a lineage that includes slaveholders, tobacco farmers, and a great-grandfather wounded at Chancellorsville, he deconstructs racist mythologies and discusses the leading and misleading of the nation into military triumph, space flight and tragedy by such problematic father figures as Henry Ford, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Wernher von Braun. Call McIntyre’s Fine Books at 542-3030 for details.
