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Nights under a Tin Roof is the first book written by James A. Autry, a southerner, a Mississippian whose travels and career as Air Force Pilot, newspaper reporter and national magazine editor and publisher have taken him far from his boyhood in the Deep South, both in geographical distance and personal perspective. In this book he returned to the nurturing presence of his Mississippi roots, to examine the forces which shaped him. His ringing, clear verse - with its wonderful synthesis of people, places and voices-focuses on the simple rhythms of rural life familiar to Americans of all regions. To accompany Autry on his private odyssey is to attend country funerals, weddings, church revivals, family reunions, courtships, dinners on the grounds - all rendered with a stunningly vivid recreation of images drawn from a unique American heritage. In these poems Autry has achieved a remarkably dense texture of memory which forges with readers of all ages and backgrounds what John Mac Carter, in his Introduction, calls "kinship." Carter attributes this immediate bond of sensibility between author and reader to a shared experience of "a time that promised to go on forever. We were living in an endless summer that owed nothing to tomorrow, and we were bound by neither urgency or despair...For all of us lucky enough to now who we are, and those of us still eager to find out, Jim Autry has laid this roof of tin". |
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