Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including The Spoon River Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Laurel Review, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, Bloom, Appalachian Heritage, Best Gay Poetry 2008, and Best Gay Stories 2008.

He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; two full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine and On the Tongue; a collection of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear; a novella, Devoured, included in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire; a book of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men; and a volume of short fiction, A History of Barbed Wire, which won a Lambda Literary Award. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

SURVIVING WINTER’S WOODS:
A TALK GIVEN IN VIRGINIA TECH’S “FINDING MY PATH” SERIES

(for Irene McKinney)

Being asked by Multicultural Affairs and Programs here at Virginia Tech to speak on “finding my path” is flattering. The underlying assumption in asking me to speak about how I have “discovered meaning and purpose in life,” to quote from the e-mail invitation I received a few months ago, is that an audience can somehow benefit from hearing that story. To talk about “the journey to finding [my] career path” and “important life lessons” I’ve learned is to presume that, from knowing a little bit about my experience, listeners can glean some truths of use to them.

On this score, I am a little “juberous” (that’s Appalachian for “dubious”), a little hopeful, a lot humbled. Much of the time I find it hard to believe that anyone’s read anything I’ve published or could garner any kind of wisdom from anything I have to say. Self-confidence has always been elusive.

But, since I’ve agreed to be here (a poet rarely misses an opportunity to enjoy the attentions of an audience), first let me complain. This invitation comes at a bad time, since these days I am full of grave doubts about my “meaning and purpose in life.” As an author whose work was originally inspired by a group of American writers called “the Confessional Poets,” I write and publish material, both poetry and prose, that is very often bluntly (one critic has said “recklessly”) autobiographical. So I hesitate only briefly before confessing to this room of some friends but mostly strangers that I am burning up with, riding full tilt into, wallowing piggishly amidst, the mythical, apparently inevitable Male Midlife Crisis.

What admission could be more banal? Really, what could be less interesting, more mundane, than a man in his late forties with a beard full of silver who’s whining about his unsatisfied dreams, futile and unreciprocated lusts, nagging despair, undone deeds, and sense of professional failure, who whinges (that wonderful British verb) about how his elbow joints interfere with his weight-lifting, how his commuting derails his half-hearted attempts to stick to a regular biking schedule, how his committee work robs him of time to focus on his own writing? You didn’t come here to hear about my Slough of Despond, to use the phrase from Pilgrim’s Progress. Well, be patient for a few more minutes, and we’ll all get to a more comfortable, positive point.