What Ties Me to Blue Mountains

This thesis includes a collection of poems and a foreword discussing individual poems, the relationship of the poems as a collection, important themes, and concerns of craft. These poems comprise a narrative of place developed chronologically and are grounded in the context of regional storytelling and oral histories specific to Southwestern Virginia during roughly the first two thirds of the Twentieth Century. History Has My Name examines culture, language, and geography—those things particular of place. In a larger social and cultural context this manuscript also focuses on the position of women and issues of racism within its stated time frame. The primary instinct of these poems is to depict these subjects honestly and without justification for long held insidious regional attitudes—attitudes that were and remain damaging to regional and cultural identities, and ideas regarding a national identity.