When Winter Come: The Ascension of York

by Frank X Walker

Overview

A sequel to the award-winning Buffalo Dance, Frank X Walker's When Winter Come: The Ascension of York is a dramatic reimagining of Lewis and Clark's legendary exploration of the American West. By focusing on the humanity and struggles of York, Clark's slave, When Winter Come challenges conventional views of the journey's heroes and exposes the deeds, both great and ghastly, of the men behind the myth. Grounded in the history of the famous trip, Walker's vibrant account allows York—little more than a forgotten footnote in traditional narratives—to embody the full range of human ability, knowledge, emotion, and experience. He is a skillful hunter who kills his prey with both grace and reverence, and he thinks deeply about the proper place of humans in the natural world. York knows the seasons "like a book," and he "can read moss, sunsets, the moon, and a mare's foaling time with a touch." The Native peoples understand and honor York's innate bond with the earth. Though his expertise is integral to the journey's success, York's masters do not reward him; they know only the way of the lash. The alternately heartbreaking and uplifting poems in When Winter Come are told from multiple perspectives and rendered in vivid detail. On the journey, York forges a spiritual connection and shares sensual delights with a Nez Perce woman, and he aches when he is forced to leave her and their unborn son. Walker's poems capture the profound feelings of love and loss on each side of this ill-fated meeting of souls. When the trek ends and York is sent back to his former home, his wife and stepmother air their joys and grievances. As the perspectives of Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and others in the party emerge, Walker also gives voice to York's knife, his hunting shirt, and the river waters that have borne the labors and travels of thousands before and after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Despite fleeting hints that escape is possible, slavery continues to bind York and quell the joyful noise in his spirit until his death. Walker's poems, however, give York his voice after centuries of silence. When Winter Come exalts the historical persona of a slave and lifts the soul of a man. York ascends out of his chains, out of oblivion, and into flight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813138893
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	02/01/2008
Series:	Kentucky Voices
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
File size:	514 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Frank X Walker is the author of Black Box, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, and Affrilachia. The recipient of a 2005 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Lillian Smith Book Award, and the Thomas D. Clark Award for Literary Excellence, Walker is Writer-in-Residence at Northern Kentucky University.

Frank X Walker, the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate, is an artist, writer, educator, and has published eleven collections of poetry, including Masked Man, Black: Pandemic&Protest Poems, Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded an NAACP Image Award and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award. He is also the author of the forthcoming A is for Affrilachia. The recipient of the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award and the Thomas D. Clark Award for Literary Excellence, he is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets.

Editorial Reviews

"What Walker gives readers in this new book is not simply the voice of York... but a profusion of individualized voices, more then a dozen, which range from York and William Clark to York's father, to his father's wife, Rose, York's unnamed slave wife, and his Nez Perce wife, but which include inanimate objects like York's hunting shirt, his hatchet, and his knife."

Emory and Henry College - John Lang

"When Winter Come is an astonishing collection of poems that ushers Frank X Walker into the company of other memorable poets like Roethke, Hugo, Clifton, and Dove but he also recollects the powerful narrative voice of Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter or Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Frank X Walker magically captures York, not the flat historical figure represented in Lewis & Clark's journals—Walker has tapped into the true voice of York and conjured him on the page. This is not just a book of poems—this is a book of spirits and shimmering apparitions."—Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red

From the Publisher

Walter's poetry is intelligent, relatable, emotional, and engaging all at the same time. He takes regional stereotypes and shatters them, showing readers through literary devices that the Appalachian region has much more to offer than what stereotypes lead those outside the region to believe. — The Sentinel-Echo

The Sentinel-Echo - Rob McDaniel

Frank X Walker has re-imagined the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition in a way no one else has. This powerful and insightful book is more than an admirable sequel to Buffalo Dance. It is a careful re-examination of historical records, re-imagined and conjured into a concert of voices whose aim is truth. One can read When Winter Come through from beginning to end like a good novel, and then go back and savor it one poem at time. Walker has given all of us who care about American literature a lasting gift.

Greg Pape

With characteristically fierce, driven energy, prize-winning poet Frank Walker seems to channel the powerful voice of York, a slave owned by William Clark, as well as the compelling voices of York's Nez Perce wife, York's brother, and Clark himself. Walker becomes a contemporary bard – thrilling us, moving us, filling us with discoveries as his remarkable poems follow the Lewis and Clark expedition from its underside. When Winter Come: The Ascension of York is Walker's finest achievement so far.

Molly Peacock