James Larkin Pearson

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James Larkin Pearson (1879 - 1981) was a poet and newspaper publisher. From 1953 - 1981 he served as North Carolina's Poet Laureate, and was the second poet to hold the title.

Contents 1 Background 2 Career As Poet and Publisher 3 Family Life 4 Links

[edit] Background

Pearson was born on September 13, 1879 in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. He would live in Wilkes County all of his life. He was born in a log cabin on his parent's farm. According to Pearson in his book My Fingers and My Toes, his first attempt at poetry came when he was about four years old: "One cold winter day my father had me out with him and asked me, "Jimmy, are you cold?" Without taking any time to study out my answer, it came like a flash: "My fingers and my toes, my feet and my hands, are jist as cold, as you'd ever see a man's." From this point, Larkin wrote, he wanted to be a poet. He was a poor student in school and wrote that he "was set down as a hopeless case...quit school entirely at 16, having never been in school more than 12 months, from first to last." However, he continued to educate himself, even when he was plowing on the family farm: "I always carried my notebook and my pencil with me, and as I trudged between the plow-handles in the hot sunshine, my mind was busy working out a poem." Pearson worked on the family farm until he was 21.

[edit] Career As Poet and Publisher

In 1900 Pearson began working with R. Don Laws on The Yellow Jacket, a newspaper which was distributed nationally and was known for its radical political views, such as espousing socialism. In 1910 Pearson began publishing his own newspaper, entitled The Fool-Killer. The paper was sold nationwide and at its height had over 50,000 subscribers. The paper's masthead showed an explosion blowing up the "drunken fool", "religious fool", "society fool", and the "political fool." Larkin wrote that "from the seclusion of these wooded hills will go forth a bundle of literary dynamite that will shake the rotten foundations of society...[The Fool-Killer] is salted with wit, peppered with humor, and seasoned with sarcasm." Larkin wrote the paper's editorials and included a good deal of his poetry in the paper. He stopped publishing the paper in 1935 following the death of his first wife, Cora Wallace, in 1934. In addition to My Fingers and My Toes, some of Pearson's many books of poetry are Fifty Acres and Other Selected Poems, Plowed Ground, and Early Harvest. On August 4, 1953 North Carolina Governor William B. Umstead appointed Pearson as North Carolina's second Poet Laureate. He kept this title until his death. Among the memorials to Pearson is the James Larkin Pearson Award in free-verse poetry; the award is presented annually by the Poetry Council of North Carolina. The library at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina is also named in Pearson's honor.

[edit] Family Life

In May 1907 Pearson married Cora Wallace. She died in 1934. He remarried, this time to Eleanor Fox, in 1939. She died in 1963. He did not remarry after his second wife's death. Pearson had one child, Agnes, who was adopted. For most of his adult life Pearson lived on his farm, called "Fifty Acres", in Boomer, North Carolina. Pearson died on August 27, 1981, at the age of 101.

[edit] Links

[[1]] Newspaper article about Pearson

[[2]] Biographical account of Pearson's life and career