Poet Tony Crunk

Crunk reading to BHSU students
from "Living in the Resurrection"


Crunk answering a student's question.

Photos taken by Carol Armbrust

Pictured here is English Professor
and Kentucky Poet Tony Crunk.

On April 17 & 18, Crunk visited
Black Hills State University co-spon-
sored by the English Dept. and the
University Programing Team.
He spent part of his visit reading
selections from his book of poetry,
"Living in the Resurrection," to BH
SU students during special class-
times. He also read to audiences
in the Student Union Multi-Purpose
Room on the evening of April 17th.

Crunk read his poetry in an "easy
to listen to" Southern drawl that
captivated his audience's attention.
During his hour and fifteen minute
special class-time readings, he an-
swered students' questions in an
animated thoroughly charming style
often stopping mid-sentence to take
a moment to reflect before continuing.

The Rapid City Journal printed
a feature on Crunk-
Mary Duffy wrote:

"His poems explore the devastation
of the rural Kentucky landscape by
coal mining, the erosion of traditional
religious values and the fragmentation
of the modern family. Not surprisingly,
some of the BHSU students found them
a bit dark. When one student questions
what she saw as the book's morbid pre-
occupation with death, Crunk agrees
that death 'is all over this book,' but in
a good way. 'Love and death are the
only two themes we get in this world,
anyway,' he tells the class."