I’m opening the box my parents just sent me. High-level divestiture (cleaning out their attic). They’re moving to a condo and discovered this antediluvian stash circa 1970-72: my year as an exchange student in West Berlin and summer job at the XX Olympics in Munich (usher in the volleyball hall). Here’s the German-Italian/Italian-German dictionary I bought for the trip my host brother and I took to Lugano and Como. How do you say, “Noch ein Bier, Bitte,” auf Italienisch? *
Apropos, here’s a beer coaster from the REAL Hofbräuhaus in München. Several volumes of Goethe and Brecht auf Deutsch. Student passes, trinkets, maps, ticket stubs. And a fat packet of letters looped with a ponytail holder — Linda and I kept up a transatlantic romance during the twelve months I was in Berlin and then the semester she spent in Hamburg.
But what’s this? A slim blue cloth-bound volume I don’t recognize at all. Slightly musty but in good repair. “Fifty Acres and other selected poems.” By James Larkin Pearson. I open to the title page, and Linda comes running into the room as I let out a whoop. 1937 . . . signed by the author.
James Larkin Pearson was appointed by Governor William B. Umstead to a life term as North Carolina’s second Poet Laureate in 1953, the year I was born. I’d never even heard of him until a few years ago when I asked someone why the Poetry Council of NC has a contest named for him. Where did this little book come from? My grandfather Cooke grew up one county over from North Wilkesboro, where Pearson was a newspaperman. Maybe he’d met him and purchased the book? Or had my Mom bought it at yard sale somewhere while I was overseas and totally forgotten about it?
There’s no telling, but I received the box weeks ago, and I’ve been saving the story until now to share as National Poetry Month winds down. Maybe it will spark a J. L. Pearson revival.
Pearson lived in Wilkes County from his birth in 1879 until his death at age 101 in 1981. For most of those years he resided on the “Fifty Acres” in Boomer, NC. To read his poetry is to put down rural roots in another century. Pearson fills his poems with his love of the land and of his family, and with spiritual longing to become one with God and with the earth. The brook will take me to its singing heart / And bear me on triumphant to the sea, / Till every land shall claim a little part, / And naught can be identified as me. (Erosion) And always he identifies his work as making the song, as becoming the song.
The poems were published as widely as The New York Times and The Detroit Free Press. Let me know and I might let you borrow my copy.
FIFTY ACRES
I’ve never been to London,
I’ve never been to Rome;
But on my Fifty Acres
I travel here at home.
The hill that looks upon me
Right here where I was born
Shall be my mighty Jungfrau,
My Alp, my Matterhorn.
A little land of Egypt
My meadow plot shall be,
With pyramids of hay stacks
Along its sheltered lee
My hundred yards of brooklet
Shall fancy’s faith beguile,
And be my Rhine, my Avon,
My Amazon, my Nile.
My humble bed of roses,
My honeysuckle hedge,
Will do for all the gardens
At all the far world’s edge.
In June I find the Tropics
Camped all about the place;
Then white December shows me
The Arctic’s frozen face.
My wood-lot grows an Arden,
My pond a Caspian Sea;
And so my Fifty Acres
Is all the world to me.
Here on my Fifty Acres
I safe at home remain,
And have my own Bermuda,
My Sicily, my Spain.
.
.
James Larkin Pearson Library at Wilkes Community College
.
.
* ” “Another beer, please” in Italian “
V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 
I love that! Inspirational and creative. I get it, I am also a traveler, but in many things I learn. My computer can be a vehicle as well as my car or a plane.
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I would love to have that poem in my new Art and Poetry compilation that I am working on now. I have nine artists from Russia, Germany, Italy, USA with diverse art and some poetry. I have twently poems going into the book and the other poems are from two of the artists. The art is diverse and emotional. They are all up and coming artists that I have met and loved what they portray. One page art, the opposite page, a poem. I am having a contest to name the book, Its a coffee table book. If you would like to take a stab at naming the book, feel free to send the name. It could be considered and win a book!
Sharon Hays
http://www.SharonHays.com
Go to my website and if you want to contact me, do so on the site.
Happy writing!
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Gee, Sharon, I’m assuming Pearson’s poems are in the public domain, but if you want to use “Fifty Acres” I suggest you contact Wilkes Community College, which houses his collection, at the link in the post. Thanks! GRIFFIN
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I love this poem! This man surely knew that old saying about wherever you go there you are.
I struggle with acceptance of this truth as I have fondness for the places I’ve visited and feel sorry for our parents/grandparents who could not afford it, or else did not feel they were missing anything….as this wise poet concludes focusing on the beauty in front of him.
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Nancy, thanks for all your insights! Like Mike and I have talked about in the past, there are so many great places in the SouthEast we could never be finished with our traveling and hardly leave the state! I don’t really feel like I’ve visited a place until I’ve walked its paths.
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Hi; I just found a record album in some of my morther’s thing’s that she left me,it is called THINGS THAT COME NO MORE a collection of poems by Mr. Pearson. It is put to music by Miss Kay Miller and Miss Janet Brookshire in 1972. It also was signed by all 3 of them. The album and cover are in real good shape. It is wonderful.
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I have A record album by MR. Pearson Miss Brookshire & MissMiller.
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In 1965 I had the privelage of being in Ms Annie Winkler’s sixth grade class, she brought Mr James Larkin Pearson to our class and did poems for the class. It was such a wonderful experience at his age he loved the students asking questions. Usually there’s a smart butt in the room but none of that showed up everyone had such respect for him. Thank you Ms Winkler and Mr Pearson for being a part of this history.
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James, thanks for sharing this — an amazing connection! I’m glad you re-discovered our second NC Poet Laureate through this poem. . . . BILL
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I too have that little book. I lived on Sunset Drive in North Wilkesboro as a child and was within walking distance of Mr. Pearson’s daughter’s home. Her name was Agnes, as best as I can remember. I hope this is right. Mr. Pearson had a studio in the upstairs of a block building and I’m thinking he printed his own copies of his books. (Or maybe just the originals). Too far back! Anyway, have always enjoyed his writings. He spoke from his heart.
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Thanks so much for sharing this! You’ve added color to the portrait of our Poet Laureate so that we can see our literary history a little more brightly. His legacy is certainly strong in this “writingest State.”
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[…] the countryside and lighten all the sky. He reminds me of North Carolina’s second Poet Laureate, James Larkin Pearson (1879-1981), who in his poem Fifty Acres (1937) sees all the world from his home in Boomer, Wilkes […]
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