FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Davis McCombs, an assistant professor of creative writing, has been awarded the Editors' Prize by The Missouri Review for his portrayal of a disappearing way of life in a series of poems written with the support of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The $20,000 NEA fellowship allowed McCombs to spend two summers working on the series, called "Tobacco Mosaic," about the decline of tobacco farming in south-central Kentucky where he grew up, about 65 miles from Louisville.

"It's a vanishing way of life," McCombs said. "I grew up completely surrounded by it, and it was beautiful. Now it's disappearing in a way that, to me, is tragic."

McCombs is from Munfordville, a town of about 1,600 where the main cash crop is tobacco. He comes from a line of tobacco farmers going back to his great-great-great-grandfather, who was named the best tobacco farmer in the state of Kentucky at the turn of the 20^th century.

He grew up surrounded by hundreds of acres of lush green tobacco land. The farmers around Munfordville grow White Burley tobacco, which is processed differently from tobacco in other areas. The Burley leaves are cured in specially designed vented barns without any artificial heat sources.

"Growing a crop of Burley tobacco is an intensely intimate, hands-on, unmechanized form of agriculture that requires great skill and knowledge," McCombs said.

Now the old landscape and the family-owned farms are disappearing as tobacco companies increasingly purchase their product from developing countries. The rolling green fields of succulent plants are gradually being replaced by boxy strip malls and subdivisions.

Not only does McCombs deal with the loss of the tobacco culture in his poems, but he also wrestles with a controversial topic that hits close to home for him. McCombs is not a smoker, and is against smoking, but he loves the culture he grew up in.

"It's fraught with moral and ethical dilemmas," he said. "It's like in one of the poems, where the speaker's mother says, 'Tobacco paid for your education.'"

McCombs' two summers of research and writing resulted in the 16 poems he submitted to The Missouri Review. He has entered the contest annually for the last four or five years.

The poet recalls the last two summers as the hardest writing experience of his life so far.

"I almost gave up twice," he said. "It was hard to find my way into it. I was really close to it, and it was emotional."

The Missouri Review is a literary journal based at the University of Missouri that publishes new fiction, poetry and essays three times a year. The Editors' Prize is awarded annually for unpublished prose and poetry.

In addition to his NEA fellowship, McCombs won the 1999 Yale Series of Younger Poets for his first book of poetry, "Ultima Thule," which was published in 2000. He has received fellowships from the Ruth Lilly Poetry Foundation and the Kentucky Arts Council. His poems have been published in The Best American Poetry 1996, The Missouri Review, and Hayden's Ferry Review. He is currently working on a new collection of poems titled "Dismal Rock."

Below is a selection from the "Tobacco Mosaic" series.

Lexicon

The people are talking about budworms; they are talking

about aphids and thrips. Under the bluff at Dismal Rock,

there where the spillway foams and simmers,

they are fishing and talking about pounds and allotments;

they are saying white burley, lugs and cutters.

Old men are whittling sticks with their pocketknives

and they are saying Paris Green; they speak of topping

and side-dressing; they are whistling and talking

about setters, plant beds and stripping rooms.

At Hedgepeths, under the shade of the Feed Mill awning,

in that place of burlap and seedbins, of metal scoops,

they are sitting on milk crates; they are drinking from bottles

and they are talking about pegs, float plants and tierpoles.

At the Depot Market, they say blue mold, high color;

they are nodding and saying sucker dope; they are leaning

on the counter and talking about Black Patch, high boys, flue-cured.

They are arguing about horn worms and buyouts.

They are saying come back, come back, come back.