>>RiverVueDispatches
Farewell to Art Icon Robert Rauschenberg
(Today, 11:17 am)
Texas born painter, photographer, printmaker, sculptor, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a read more...
April in Alabama
(Apr 23rd, 12:36 pm)
Nothing could be more beautiful than April in Alabama and, in my case, nothing could be more exciting. I recently returned from the read more...
Alabama: Places to Be and People to See
(Apr 8th, 11:37 am)
The Alabama Book Festival held in Montgomery, read more...
Alabama Beat: Words and Music in the Deep South
(Mar 28th, 7:12 am)
The three poems currently appearing in the Poetry section of Swampland are by Mississippi born Pulitzer Prize winner
The South has many voices--mine is but one--as well as many worlds. My world is part academe (and somewhat urbane) and part rural south where kudzu competes with cotton for supremacy
and where we in the Tennessee River Valley struggle for peaceful coexistence with the prolific and persistent wildlife.
In RiverVue, my aim is to capture a slice of this life, viewed through the lens of one "bred and bawn in a brier-patch" and refracted by many years of teaching and traveling.
RiverVue may be about attending a festival in Florence, Alabama, or a wedding in Florence, Italy. It can be about be about kayaking on Bear Creek or hiking up a mud soaked mountain
in the rain forest of Costa Rica.
RiverVue is about celebration, diversity, adventure, friends, family, fellowship, and food. There will always be food.
So mix up a mint julep and climb on for the ride.
As M.F.K. Fisher wrote in Serve It Forth: "When shall we live, if not now?"
-Penne J Laubenthal
Picture of the Day
>>RiverVue reviews
Review of: Gayden Metcalf and Charlotte Hays
Being Dead Is No Excuse
Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting The Perfect Funeral Hyperion Press, 2005
Review of: Logan Smalley
Darius Goes West
“Something’s gonna happen like…Just spark the whole world,”exclaims Darius, the star of the award-winning read more...
>>RiverVue Fiction
There are no RiverVue fiction writings at this time
>>RiverVue Features
New York City Southern Style: Alabama Studio Weekend in the Shoals
by Penne J. Laubenthal Imagine starting off your Saturday morning with the perfect Bloody Mary, garnished in typical southern fashion with pickled okra, and served to you by one of the country’s foremost clothing designers, Billy Reid, in his boutique housed in the historic and elegantly appointed Pickett Place read more...
Natasha Trethewey—Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
by Penne J. Laubenthal Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey is a poet who gives voice to the voiceless, names to the nameless, and who creates monuments in words for those whom history has forgotten. Relying on photographs, personal memory, read more...
>>RiverVue Conversations
Billy Bob Thornton in Florence, Alabama
by Penne J. Laubenthal Severeweather warnings had been issued for North Alabama when I made my way to Florence for the Friday afternoon session of the 11th Annual George Lindsey Film Festival featuring Billy Bob Thornton. But apparently neither sleet nor snow nor read more...
Deryle Perryman and Dangerous Highway, a Film About Eddie Hinton
by Penne J. Laubenthal Dangerous Highway is an amazing documentary about the life and music of the incredibly talented and tragically fated Eddie Hinton, called the "greatest unknown musician you have ever heard." The film was made by read more...
Read All RiverVue Conversations
>>RiverVue Poetry
Poems by Natasha Trethewey
Miscegenation In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi; they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi. They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong, mis in Mississippi. A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the read more...
Hunting the Cotaco Creek
by Charles Ghigna His hand in hold so trigger tight even its blood believes in ghosts. It clings with set finger on steel and waits inside a dream of ducks. The twilight gives into a rise of eastern sky as sun reveals herself too proud and instantly receives full face a splash of mallard flock. A shotgun blasts the read more...