A Day of It

A Day of It, the ninth book of poems by Michael Chitwood, is a fanfare for the commonplace and the oft overlooked, both among places and people. In the spirit of Seamus Heaney, Chitwood’s poetry seeks the whereabouts of the “thin places” in the everyday—an abandoned barn, a weedy roadside, even an antique sewing machine. The dwindling tobacco fields and shuttered textile mills of Chitwood’s native Appalachia bring to bear both personal and historical revelations. The complicated history of the region entwines with the personal in sonically rich lyrics. This is no Appalachian elegy, but Appalachian homage.

The poems in A Day of It pay people and place their greatest compliment: attention.