Showing posts with label appalachian lit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label appalachian lit. Show all posts
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Accepted!
8 December 2016: Today's good thing? An acceptance letter from Appalachian Journal for my Ron Rash article. I have some revisions to do, but man, I am thrilled. This one feels really good.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Thinking about River of Earth
Work on another project brought me back to River of Earth, by James Still. I first read the novel when I was in college, in a fantastic Appalachian literature class--the class that made me realize that there is this thing called Appalachian literature and that it's worth reading and studying. I remember loving the book so much that I wrote my final paper for the class on it. That paper turned into one of my graduate school writing samples. (At least one school wanted two samples.)
Anyway, although I hate to admit it, that college class was about 14 years ago, so it had been a long time since I'd read the book. So what a treat it was to return to it! And it amazed me how many lines and phrases I remembered. Still's writing is practically prose poetry in places (how's that for alliteration?), but it's poetry wrapped up in real life--life that is hard and complex and offers no easy answers, especially to those who are barely hanging on, like the characters in this novel. Still finds the beauty and poetry in the speech and lives of these people, much of it richly realized through their dialect.
This passage, which comes a scene in which the (unnamed) main character's parents discuss moving to a coal camp, gives a good sense of what I am talking about. Mother doesn't want to go. She wants to stay where they are, where they've planted a garden, where they can put down roots. But she also realizes how little power she has. Father will make the decision for the family, and he's made up his mind. As a reader, your heart breaks for the mother--you want them to stay--but you also see where the father, who wants to provide for his family, is coming from. And you know that he's also wrong about the mine providing stability. You suspect that he knows he's wrong, too. But he's desperate. And their debate--should we settle down or are we meant to roam?--is central to our culture.
Anyway, although I hate to admit it, that college class was about 14 years ago, so it had been a long time since I'd read the book. So what a treat it was to return to it! And it amazed me how many lines and phrases I remembered. Still's writing is practically prose poetry in places (how's that for alliteration?), but it's poetry wrapped up in real life--life that is hard and complex and offers no easy answers, especially to those who are barely hanging on, like the characters in this novel. Still finds the beauty and poetry in the speech and lives of these people, much of it richly realized through their dialect.
This passage, which comes a scene in which the (unnamed) main character's parents discuss moving to a coal camp, gives a good sense of what I am talking about. Mother doesn't want to go. She wants to stay where they are, where they've planted a garden, where they can put down roots. But she also realizes how little power she has. Father will make the decision for the family, and he's made up his mind. As a reader, your heart breaks for the mother--you want them to stay--but you also see where the father, who wants to provide for his family, is coming from. And you know that he's also wrong about the mine providing stability. You suspect that he knows he's wrong, too. But he's desperate. And their debate--should we settle down or are we meant to roam?--is central to our culture.
Mother was on the rag edge of
crying. “Forever moving yon and back, setting down nowhere for good and
all, searching for God knows what,” she said. “Where air we expecting to
draw up to?” Her eyes dampened. “Forever I’ve wanted to set us down
in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring, with room to swing arm and elbow,
a garden-piece for fresh victuals, and a cow to furnish milk for the
baby. So many places we’ve lived – the far side one mine camp and next the
slag pile of another. Hardburly. Lizzyblue. Tribbey. I’m longing to set me down shorely and raise my chaps proper.”
Father’s ears reddened. He
spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content
on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be treading the
camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on
it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.” (51-52).
The language of this passage is worth lingering over--and it's not even close to Still's most beautiful passages. In fact, that some of these phrases appear right in the middle of ordinary, plain speaking dialect shows just how effortless Still's craft appears to be: "a place certain and enduring, with room to swing arm and elbow," "...never meant for a body to be full content on the face of earth," the syntax of the father's last words.
All that said, you know I'm going to recommend the darn thing. Read it. It's short, beautiful, and, perhaps especially in a week where half of Congress votes to cut the SNAP program, it lingers in your mind.
Work Cited
Still, James. River of Earth. 1940. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1978. Print.
Mother
was on the rag edge of crying. “Forever moving yon and back, setting
down nowhere for good and all, searching for God knows what,” she said.
“Where air we expecting to draw up to?” Her eyes dampened. “Forever
I’ve wanted to set us down in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring,
with room to swing arm and elbow, a garden-piece for fresh victuals,
and a cow to furnish milk for the baby. So many places we’ve lived –
the far side one mine camp and next the slag pile of another.
Hardburly. Lizzyblue. Tribbey. I’m longing to set me down shorely and
raise my chaps proper.”
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be treading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
- See more at: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/08/still%E2%80%99s-river-of-earth/#sthash.lfGOL1cg.dpuf
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be treading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
- See more at: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/08/still%E2%80%99s-river-of-earth/#sthash.lfGOL1cg.dpuf
Mother
was on the rag edge of crying. “Forever moving yon and back, setting
down nowhere for good and all, searching for God knows what,” she said.
“Where air we expecting to draw up to?” Her eyes dampened. “Forever
I’ve wanted to set us down in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring,
with room to swing arm and elbow, a garden-piece for fresh victuals,
and a cow to furnish milk for the baby. So many places we’ve lived –
the far side one mine camp and next the slag pile of another.
Hardburly. Lizzyblue. Tribbey. I’m longing to set me down shorely and
raise my chaps proper.”
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be treading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
- See more at: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/08/still%E2%80%99s-river-of-earth/#sthash.lfGOL1cg.dpuf
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be treading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
- See more at: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/08/still%E2%80%99s-river-of-earth/#sthash.lfGOL1cg.dpuf
Mother
was on the rag edge of crying. “Forever moving yon and back, setting
down nowhere for good and all, searching for God knows what,” she said.
“Where air we expecting to draw up to?” Her eyes dampened. “Forever
I’ve wanted to set us down in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring,
with room to swing arm and elbow, a garden-piece for fresh victuals,
and a cow to furnish milk for the baby. So many places we’ve lived –
the far side one mine camp and next the slag pile of another.
Hardburly. Lizzyblue. Tribbey. I’m longing to set me down shorely and
raise my chaps proper.”
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be treading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
- See more at: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/08/still%E2%80%99s-river-of-earth/#sthash.lfGOL1cg.dpuf
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be treading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
- See more at: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/08/still%E2%80%99s-river-of-earth/#sthash.lfGOL1cg.dpuf
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Rebecca Harding Davis in Boston...
Since mid-December, I've had a Word document filled with notes from Rebecca Harding Davis's 1904 memoir Bits of Gossip sitting on the desktop of my computer. I recently wrote a (very short) introduction to Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills" which will appear in the new volume of the Anthology of Appalachian Writers. (Davis is the second heritage writer the anthology will include--last year's volume included Jesse Stuart's "Split Cherry Tree," for which I also wrote the introduction.) This evening, I am giving myself a little break from other work, and decided it's about time to write about those notes I've had saved since before Christmas.
The bits from Bits of Gossip were beyond the scope of my introduction, but I saved them anyway, especially the parts where Davis recounts her 1860s visits to Boston and her meetings with various American literary luminaries including Bronson Alcott (she was not a fan), his daughter Louisa (more about her below), Ralph Waldo Emerson (she was quite a fan, but felt he was hopelessly out of touch and felt his deep respect for Bronson Alcott was "almost painful to see"), and Nathaniel Hawthorne. These memories are especially interesting for someone studying 19th-century American literature, because they show us an "outsider's" perspective on the sometimes very insular world of the Boston literati.
I'll share just a few parts here. First, on Louisa May Alcott:
"During my first visit to Boston in 1862, I saw at an evening reception a tall, thin young woman standing alone in a corner. She was plainly dressed, and had that watchful, defiant air with which the woman whose youth is slipping away is apt to face the world which has offered no place to her. Presently she came up to me.
'These people may say pleasant things to you,' she said abruptly ; 'but not one of them would have gone to Concord and back to see you, as I did to-day. I went for this gown. It's the only decent one I have. I'm very poor;" and in the next breath she contrived to tell me that she had once taken a place as 'second girl.' 'My name,' she added, 'is Louisa Alcott.'
Now, although we had never met, Louisa Alcott had shown me great kindness in the winter just past, sacrificing a whole day to a tedious work which was to give me pleasure at a time when every hour counted largely to her in her desperate struggle to keep her family from want. The little act was so considerate and fine, that I am still grateful for it, now when I am an old woman, and Louisa Alcott has long been dead. It was as natural for her to do such things as for a pomegranate-tree to bear fruit.
Before I met her I had known many women and girls who were fighting with poverty and loneliness, wondering why God had sent them into a life where apparently there was no place for them, but never one so big and generous in soul as this one in her poor scant best gown, the 'claret-colored merino,' which she tells of with such triumph in her diary. Amid her grim surroundings, she had the gracious instincts of a queen. It was her delight to give, to feed living creatures, to make them happy in body and soul.
She would so welcome you on her home to a butterless baked potato and a glass of milk that you would never forget the delicious feast. Or, if she had no potato or milk to offer, she would take you through the woods to the river, and tell you old legends of colony times, and be so witty and kind in the doing of it that the day would stand out in your memory ever after, differing from all other days, brimful of pleasure and comfort.
With this summer, however, the darkest hour of her life passed. A few months after I saw her she went as a nurse into the war, and soon after wrote her 'Hospital Sketches.' Then she found her work and place in the world.
Years afterward she came to the city where I was living and I hurried to meet her. The lean, eager, defiant girl was gone, and instead, there came to greet me a large, portly, middle-aged woman, richly dressed. Everything about her, from her shrewd, calm eyes to the rustle of her satin gown told me of assured success.
Yet I am sure fame and success counted for nothing with her except for the material aid which they enabled her to give to a few men and women whom she loved. She would have ground her bones to make their bread. Louisa Alcott wrote books which were true and fine, but she never imagined a life as noble as her own. "
It seems to me here that Davis is especially insightful and sensitive to so many important factors: what drove Alcott in her work, what it was like for women like Louisa who really did wonder what their place in the world was, how she very nearly did write herself to death to support her family. Yes, it is a bit sentimental, especially towards the end, but I find the whole sketch quite moving (especially her description of "that watchful, defiant air with which the woman whose youth is slipping away is apt to face the world which has offered no place to her.")
Davis's recollections of Hawthorne reveal her deep admiration for him and his work, not surprising since he was a life-long influence on her own work. She writes of her final meeting with him, a few months before his death. They walked around Concord, and sat down on the grass in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery:
"...In a few months he was lying under the deep grass, at rest, near the very spot where he sat and laughed, looking up at us. I left Concord that evening and never saw him again. He said good-by, hesitated shyly, and then, holding out his hand, said:-- 'I am sorry you are going away. It seems as if we had known you always.' The words were nothing. I suppose he forgot them and me as he turned into the house. And yet, because perhaps of the child in the cherry-tree, and the touch which the magician laid upon her, I have never forgotten them. They seemed to take me, too, for one moment, into his enchanted country. Of the many pleasant things which have come into my life, this was one of the pleasantest and best."
That reads a bit like a fan-girl's dream come true, right? To have one of your favorite writers--someone who has influenced you so much--share such kind words with you? Good stuff. As a side-note, I like this little memory of late-in-his-life-Hawthorne because so much of what I came across while writing my Marble Faun paper indicated how unhappy and unpleasant he was late in life. It's nice to see that there might have been some exceptions to that general mood of dissatisfaction.
You can read more of Bits of Gossip here (the whole thing's on Google Books!) or just look at the "Boston in the 1860s" section here.
The bits from Bits of Gossip were beyond the scope of my introduction, but I saved them anyway, especially the parts where Davis recounts her 1860s visits to Boston and her meetings with various American literary luminaries including Bronson Alcott (she was not a fan), his daughter Louisa (more about her below), Ralph Waldo Emerson (she was quite a fan, but felt he was hopelessly out of touch and felt his deep respect for Bronson Alcott was "almost painful to see"), and Nathaniel Hawthorne. These memories are especially interesting for someone studying 19th-century American literature, because they show us an "outsider's" perspective on the sometimes very insular world of the Boston literati.
I'll share just a few parts here. First, on Louisa May Alcott:
"During my first visit to Boston in 1862, I saw at an evening reception a tall, thin young woman standing alone in a corner. She was plainly dressed, and had that watchful, defiant air with which the woman whose youth is slipping away is apt to face the world which has offered no place to her. Presently she came up to me.
'These people may say pleasant things to you,' she said abruptly ; 'but not one of them would have gone to Concord and back to see you, as I did to-day. I went for this gown. It's the only decent one I have. I'm very poor;" and in the next breath she contrived to tell me that she had once taken a place as 'second girl.' 'My name,' she added, 'is Louisa Alcott.'
Now, although we had never met, Louisa Alcott had shown me great kindness in the winter just past, sacrificing a whole day to a tedious work which was to give me pleasure at a time when every hour counted largely to her in her desperate struggle to keep her family from want. The little act was so considerate and fine, that I am still grateful for it, now when I am an old woman, and Louisa Alcott has long been dead. It was as natural for her to do such things as for a pomegranate-tree to bear fruit.
Before I met her I had known many women and girls who were fighting with poverty and loneliness, wondering why God had sent them into a life where apparently there was no place for them, but never one so big and generous in soul as this one in her poor scant best gown, the 'claret-colored merino,' which she tells of with such triumph in her diary. Amid her grim surroundings, she had the gracious instincts of a queen. It was her delight to give, to feed living creatures, to make them happy in body and soul.
She would so welcome you on her home to a butterless baked potato and a glass of milk that you would never forget the delicious feast. Or, if she had no potato or milk to offer, she would take you through the woods to the river, and tell you old legends of colony times, and be so witty and kind in the doing of it that the day would stand out in your memory ever after, differing from all other days, brimful of pleasure and comfort.
With this summer, however, the darkest hour of her life passed. A few months after I saw her she went as a nurse into the war, and soon after wrote her 'Hospital Sketches.' Then she found her work and place in the world.
Years afterward she came to the city where I was living and I hurried to meet her. The lean, eager, defiant girl was gone, and instead, there came to greet me a large, portly, middle-aged woman, richly dressed. Everything about her, from her shrewd, calm eyes to the rustle of her satin gown told me of assured success.
Yet I am sure fame and success counted for nothing with her except for the material aid which they enabled her to give to a few men and women whom she loved. She would have ground her bones to make their bread. Louisa Alcott wrote books which were true and fine, but she never imagined a life as noble as her own. "
It seems to me here that Davis is especially insightful and sensitive to so many important factors: what drove Alcott in her work, what it was like for women like Louisa who really did wonder what their place in the world was, how she very nearly did write herself to death to support her family. Yes, it is a bit sentimental, especially towards the end, but I find the whole sketch quite moving (especially her description of "that watchful, defiant air with which the woman whose youth is slipping away is apt to face the world which has offered no place to her.")
Davis's recollections of Hawthorne reveal her deep admiration for him and his work, not surprising since he was a life-long influence on her own work. She writes of her final meeting with him, a few months before his death. They walked around Concord, and sat down on the grass in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery:
"...In a few months he was lying under the deep grass, at rest, near the very spot where he sat and laughed, looking up at us. I left Concord that evening and never saw him again. He said good-by, hesitated shyly, and then, holding out his hand, said:-- 'I am sorry you are going away. It seems as if we had known you always.' The words were nothing. I suppose he forgot them and me as he turned into the house. And yet, because perhaps of the child in the cherry-tree, and the touch which the magician laid upon her, I have never forgotten them. They seemed to take me, too, for one moment, into his enchanted country. Of the many pleasant things which have come into my life, this was one of the pleasantest and best."
That reads a bit like a fan-girl's dream come true, right? To have one of your favorite writers--someone who has influenced you so much--share such kind words with you? Good stuff. As a side-note, I like this little memory of late-in-his-life-Hawthorne because so much of what I came across while writing my Marble Faun paper indicated how unhappy and unpleasant he was late in life. It's nice to see that there might have been some exceptions to that general mood of dissatisfaction.
You can read more of Bits of Gossip here (the whole thing's on Google Books!) or just look at the "Boston in the 1860s" section here.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Two quick links: Appalachian writers taking on Big Coal
These are already a bit old, but worth posting:
1) Wendell Berry pulls his personal papers from UK over the University's relationship to the coal industry.
2) Silas House takes on an absurd, infantile, sexist attack on Ashley Judd over MTR.
Seems like a good place to include a Berry poem...how about this one?
1) Wendell Berry pulls his personal papers from UK over the University's relationship to the coal industry.
2) Silas House takes on an absurd, infantile, sexist attack on Ashley Judd over MTR.
Seems like a good place to include a Berry poem...how about this one?
"The Peace of Wild Things"
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
(via the Poetry Foundation)
Hmm...and let's give Silas a shout-out, too: consider buying a copy of The Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Volume II, featuring a new and very moving short story by House, "Recruiters."
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