Father Tree Water: Collected Poems and Photographs of the Rappahannock Mind Body Spirit

In more than a hundred poems and vignettes Larry D. Giles creates an enchanting world at once gritty and visceral in tone, shaman-like in understanding. With stark honesty framed in exquisite vision, the poems of Father Tree Water: Collected Poems and Photographs of the Rappahannock Mind Body Spirit plunge into Larry’s unique Southern multicultural heritage and explore his unique background of many identities from sharecropping to pedagogical, personal to family crises. From the sardonic humor of “he did not ask to be born naked,” Larry exposes his vulnerabilities for flesh, nature, and beauty, “feeling something so perfect and pretty and wrong, we just knew,” to eventual healing, spiritual actualization, and reconciliation. Archiving more than 200 vintage and contemporary images from his family and home locality, the author presents a view of a world that soars beyond words.