Saturday Review: “A Poetic Journey into the Appalachian Past” a review by Thomas Rain Crowe in NCLR Online Winter 2025 of Julia Nunnally Duncan’s poetry collection When Time Was Suspended
In his review Crowe describes When Time Was Suspended as a collection focused “on family roots and preserving family stories about those that have peopled her western North Carolina experience.” The poems in this book explore Duncan’s childhood growing up in Appalachia and her family’s history there. Crowe sees them as “narratives as if written for family archives — to be read and appreciated by future generations,” like the title poem:
Mysteries are there –
faces from long ago
that no one today can identify;
and revelations, too –
youthful versions of loved ones
who lived in a past
we never knew.
Photographs capture times
we might forget
if not for an image to remind us
of that day.
Sad, enlightening, and dear
family pictures can be,
allowing us to see
what we and others were then
at that moment
when time was suspended.
The poems are also about the nature, culture, and history of Appalachia itself. Crowe writes “Julia Nunnally Duncan has written from what she knows — a portrait of Southern Appalachia’s past. Something that can be appreciated as poetry, yet studied as definitive Appalachian history.”
