The Drownt Boy:
An Ozark Tale
Copyright © 1994
by Art Homer
U of Missouri P
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It had been many years since Art
Homer had spent time in the region where
he grew up as the child of subsistence farmers.
In this beautifully written true tale,
Homer returns to the Missouri Ozarks with
his stepson, Reese, for a three-day canoe trip
down the recently flooded Current River. As
rain threatens to erupt again and the two
prepare for their uncertain trip down the
swollen river, a man in a straw hat pulls up to
them on the gravel bar. "Did they find that
drownt boy yet?" he calls. So begins an
extraordinary trip down a dangerous river,
toward unforeseen adventures and into the
swirling recesses of memory.
As they float past dense, dark woods,
Homer recalls the magic of nature in his
childhood. Against a backdrop of rural
poverty, Homer shows the richness of the
land in the inner life of a child, from frosty
blue-bellied lizards and doodlebugs to the
timeless lure of gurgling streams. He recalls
as well the people from his past a snake
handler, his English grandfather, an NAACP
preacher--and marvels at how time seems to
have passed the Ozarks by, leaving touches of
Old English in the language and leaving the
lives of the people, in many ways, unchanged.
As helicopters purr above and rangers
probe deep pools from motorboats, the two
pursue the ghost of the drownt boy down
the stream. Along the way they visit caves
and springs, talk with the locals about their
lives, and witness the spectacular beauty of
kingfishers and great blue herons, eels and
trout flashing in the sun. But they must also
confront the temperament of a river threatening
to burst from its banks as they maneuver
through an obstacle course of downed
trees, rushing rapids, and upturned roots
ready to impale a swimmer.
Winding through the surging waters of an
Ozark river and through a flood of memories
of an Ozark childhood, The Drownt Boy is a
lyrical depiction of one man's journey home.--from the jacket
Art Homer's The Drownt Boy is a complex and
magical evocation of place. Its Ozarks are made of the
deep stuff of boyhood memory and family life and a
carefully described, present-day canoe trip down the
Current River, taken at flood-stage, by Homer and his
stepson. Both journeys--past and present--require an
immersion in the language and lore of the place, combined with
a disciplined attention to detail, as it is encountered or
recollected.
This is wonderfully vivid, lively writing. The present
river, the woods and cabin of Homer's childhood shimmer
with bright clarity. The Ozarks have never been better served, but
The Drownt Boy's central task is the conscious
deciphering of the "testimony of the Ozarks"--or the testimony
of any of our places--a rigorous and redemptive invention of the
self and its place through language.--Michael Anania
A fine work, thick with earned
insight and often quite brilliantly
said. It is exactly the sort of book
we need most in America these
days, located securely in the human
life of a particular place.--William Kittredge
...filled with lyrical, even mystical insights and asides....[Homer's]
tribute to the backwoods environment of his youth, when the "depression
moved into the Ozarks, liked it, and retired there after World War II,
letting the rest of the country go on with the boom times," is rich in
appreciation of lore and language that is still tinged with Old English,
and of a people in many ways unchanged for ages.--Pubishers Weekly
This book can be savored again and again. It could be used for
meditation or as a springboard for one's own journey.--West
Coast Review of Books (four stars)
Homer is a stylist who fills every sentence with sensations and rich
histories. The poet's training is evident in his careful creation of
every phrase, and this book proves he is a master storyteller as
well.--Denise Low, Kansas City Star
The Drownt Boy is a finely crafted picture
of a place and time, and a man's reflections on them. Homer's
style is as lean and vivid as the country he writes about. His
narrative--part travel tale, part essay, part memoir of a
family's life in the Ozarks a generation ago--flows like a
mountain stream.--Springfield News-Leader
Looking for signs, grappling with recurring images of spirals, quicksand,
downcurrents, and against the unpredictability of his
father's epilepsy, [Homer] tries to anticipate any
disaster the river voyage might bring, but nothing can shield him
from the blindness inherent in this kind of time travel. He goes against his
better judgment. He goes to bond with his
stepchild. He goes to make up for his
own father's falling down on the job. He goes for the
experience.--The Bloomsbury Review
Reading this book, which is just thick with learning and detail, is like
taking a walk through the woods of the mind. Every turn brings
us to some new aspect, some view we have never seen before,
or never thought of in quite that way.--Northwest Arkansas Times
The Drownt Boy, published by the University of Missouri Press, is a
hybrid literary form: a mixture of memoir and adventure. Stories about
growing up poor in southeast Missouri are interspersed with those about a
risky, three-day canoe trip Homer and his ten 13-year-old stepson, Reese,
took on the Current River in the same area....He retains his link to land and
landscape and the real world of nature.--Gerald Wade, Omaha World-Herald
Homer, who teaches in the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska,
has written a recollection of the Missouri Ozarks using "a combination of
childhood memory, history, and wishful thinking."--Library Journal
It's a lyrical evocation of a singular, outmoded way of life....Homer...writes
most effectively of childhood--collecting ant lions and chicken eggs or
watching his father scythe the front yard to deter snakes. The canoe trip
likewise provides good material--river-rangers looking for a "drownt" child,
car-campers deposited in treetops by high, violent water.--Los Angeles
Book Review
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Skies of Such
Valuable Glass
Copyright © 1990
by Art Homer
Owl Creek Press
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Skies of Such Valuable Glass, like Snodgrass's
Heart's Needle and
Hugo's The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir is the chronicle of
one man's exile in the heartland of his own country-- his stoic
determination, in the face of divorce, loss, estrangement, to
derive, singlehandedly, some aesthetic sustenance out of his
world's prevailing greys. These poems have a somber and
enduring magnificence. They are a testament to the salvational
nature of all art, when that art has been fully lived and, what is
rarer, fully wrought. Art Homer is one of the best younger poets
writing in America today.--Jonathan Holden
One after another, Art Homer's poems offer a tactile, complex, yet
simply rendered world that we can believe is ours while sensing--as
we sense in the presence of our best artists--that it is peculiarly
his world, infused by his spirit and sensibility. I love his
complicitous stance, and his voice that can be simultaneously
severe and compassionate. A wonderful book!--Stephen Dunn
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What the Critics Say
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