Far From the Centers of Ambition

Two perfect bound volumes enclosed in cloth slip case

Confluence: full color throughout; 256 pages

Varve: full color throughout; 112 pages

At?Black Mountain College, poets, philosophers, scientists and painters such as Robert Duncan, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Josef Albers engaged in a vast experiment whose widespread results are still felt around the world today. Lenoir-Rhyne University’s 2008 Spirit of Black Mountain College was the country’s only major acknowledgment of the 1933 opening of Black Mountain College. While remnants of the Spirit of BMC celebration can still be found on-line, Far from the Centers of Ambition keeps a tribute to the College alive in print. 

The poetry and art of  Ted Pope collected in Varve emerges directly from his inspired BMC celebration installation, The Black Mountains of Mars. Pope, of Morganton, NC is often cited as embodying both the avant-garde and Appalachian, the disruptive and down-to-earth, energies which we have come to associate with the vast array of BMC artists.

Rand Brandes

Rand Brandes, Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Martin Luther Stevens Professor of English, is the founder and director of L-R U’s Visiting Writers Series. A recipient of two Senior Fulbright Fellowships to work with Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney in Dublin, Brandes has published widely in Modern and Contemporary British and Irish Poetry.    

Lee Ann Brown

Lee Ann Brown was born in Japan, raised in Charlotte, NC, and now lives in New York City and Marshall, NC. She is Associate Professor of English at St. John’s University, editor of Tender Buttons Press, and produces poetry in performance in NYC as Page Poetry Parlor, and in NC as The French Broad Institute.