BLUEFIELD — A love for Appalachian landscapes traverses generations and mediums in a new collection of poetry and photographs, Spruce Wind’s Song: The West Virginia Poetry of Ivan Norton Hunter.
The collection brings together verse and prose stories based on Richwood, West Virginia native, Ivan Hunter’s memories of beloved places and people he encountered growing up.
According to a press release, Hunter was born in Richwood, in Nicholas County in 1916 and lived there until just before World War II, when he married and moved to Nitro, W.Va. He served in the Navy in both World War II and the Korean War, returning after both conflicts to his home and family in Nitro, where he became postmaster. He was also a community leader and co-founder of the Upper Vandalia Historical Society. He was twice named West Virginia’s Outstanding Young Man of the Year.
His passion was poetry, which he wrote most of his adult life. In poems such as “Hinkle Mountain Road,” “First Light,” “Barren She Run” and “Sundown out Greenbrier Road,” he connects memory and emotion in gem-like verses whose memorable language and subtle rhythms express hard-won insights about love and life.
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