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| At the time of her death in 2000, Bennie Lee Sinclair was the Poet Laureate of South Carolina. Her third book of poems, Lord of Springs, won the Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year Award for 1990. Her other awards included a Stephen Vincent Benet Narrative Poem Award, a Best American Short Stories citation, and a South Carolina Writers Award.
Her first novel, The Lynching, was published in 1991. The novel is based on the story of Willie Earl, who was lynched in Greenville County, South Carolina, in 1947. Bennie Lee Sinclair lived and worked at her home Wildernesse, in the South Carolina mountains near Cleveland. |
| Going Blind First, footnotes slide like tears from the page. Next, the smaller creatures-- birds, mice--disappear. Then, most amazing, friends' faces; a loved one's hands. In the back of the eye, blood collects, a dark shadow. Hospital, pain . . . What does it matter, Eliot's bank's address, a scurrying blur, tanager's flame? Yet, last, anything worth a try: surgeon's knife, laser's beam, a Gypsy's casting of cards, palms; even prayer. **************Bennie Lee Sinclair Copyright 1992 |