The Language They Speak Is Things to Eat

by McFee, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780807844830
• ISBN10: 0807844837
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

North Carolina is well known for its fiction writers, but the state is also home to a number of the nation's best poets. In the past few decades, these poets have produced memorable work and received numerous honors. A companion to the contemporary North Carolina fiction anthology The Rough Road Home(1992), this book provides a substantial sampling of their recent bounty. Poet Michael McFee has chosen from eight to twenty poems by each of fifteen poets. There is a refreshing diversity in the voices, from James Applewhite's down east tobacco farmer to Gerald Barrax's passionate urban man to Kathryn Stripling Byer's isolated mountain woman. The humor ranges from Maya Angelou's serious wit to Jonathan Williams's verbal improvisations. And there is a healthy variety in form and tone, from A. R. Ammons's free verse ruminations to Fred Chappell's vigorous, witty narratives in traditional forms. But there is also a fundamental unity to these poets. They are all North Carolina writers, who were born in or have long lived in the state, and whose verbal consciousness has been shaped by the very nature of the place. Most importantly, they are all poets we can read with appreciation and great pleasure. contributors Betty Adcock A. R. Ammons Maya Angelou James Applewhite Gerald Barrax Kathryn Stripling Byer Fred Chappell William Harmon Susan Ludvigson Michael McFee Heather Ross Miller Robert Morgan Reynolds Price James Seay Jonathan Williams

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Southbound	p. 3
Walking Out	p. 4
Hand Made	p. 5
One Street	p. 7
Front Porch	p. 7
Roller Rink	p. 8
Poetry Workshop in a Maximum Security Reform School	p. 9
Clearing Out, 1974	p. 10
Remembering Brushing My Grandmother's Hair	p. 14
Exchange	p. 15
Rent House	p. 16
Uppermost	p. 21
Double Exposure	p. 21
Strolls	p. 22
Ballad	p. 22
Certainty	p. 24
80-Proof	p. 24
Rapids	p. 25
Easter Morning	p. 25
Night Finding	p. 28
Parting	p. 29
Late Look	p. 30
I Went Back	p. 31
Wiring	p. 31
The Role of Society in the Artist	p. 31
Trigger	p. 33
Dusk Water	p. 33
Windy Morning with a Little Sleet	p. 34
Singling and Doubling Together	p. 35
Country Lover	p. 39
A Good Woman Feeling Bad	p. 39
Momma Welfare Roll	p. 40
Contemporary Announcement	p. 40
Amoebaean for Daddy	p. 41
Preacher, Don't Send Me	p. 42
Why Are They Happy People?	p. 43
The Memory	p. 44
Some Words for Fall	p. 47
Tobacco Men	p. 47
A Vigil	p. 48
Barbecue Service	p. 49
Collards	p. 50
Greene County Pastoral	p. 51
A Leaf of Tobacco	p. 53
Earth Lust	p. 54
Southern Voices	p. 55
Summer Revival	p. 56
White Lake	p. 57
The Descent	p. 58
News of Pearl Harbor	p. 59
My Cousin Sue's Broad View	p. 60
The Cemetery next to Contentnea	p. 61
Something I Know about Her	p. 65
Body Food	p. 65
Another Fellow	p. 66
Who Needs No Introduction	p. 67
Spirituals, Gospels	p. 68
One More Word	p. 69
Two Figures on Canvas	p. 70
Portraits	p. 70
Liberation	p. 71
Domestic Tranquility	p. 72
Theology	p. 73
Strangers Like Us: Pittsburgh, Raleigh, 1945-1985	p. 73
What More?	p. 74
Haunted House	p. 75
Adagio	p. 77
Wide Open, These Gates	p. 81
Drought	p. 82
My Beautiful Grandmother	p. 83
Angels	p. 84
Kitchen Sink	p. 85
Wildwood Flower	p. 86
All Hallows Eve	p. 87
Lost Soul	p. 88
Lullaby	p. 89
Thaw	p. 90
Quilt	p. 91
Lineage	p. 91
Diamonds	p. 93
Easter	p. 93
A Prayer for the Mountains	p. 97
My Grandfather Gets Doused	p. 97
Rimbaud Fire Letter to Jim Applewhite	p. 101
My Mother Shoots the Breeze	p. 104
My Father Washes His Hands	p. 107
The Story	p. 109
Abandoned Schoolhouse on Long Branch	p. 110
Narcissus and Echo	p. 111
Teller	p. 111
Daisy	p. 112
First Novel	p. 112
Upon a Confessional Poet	p. 113
Literary Critic	p. 113
Another	p. 113
Another	p. 113
Televangelist	p. 114
El Perfecto	p. 114
Apology	p. 114
Mothsong	p. 117
The House	p. 118
Redounding	p. 119
Totem-Motet	p. 120
Zubby Sutra	p. 120
The Lilies of the Field Know Which Side Their Bread Is Buttered On	p. 122
Where Scars Come From	p. 126
There	p. 127
The Missionary Position	p. 129
A Masque of Resignation	p. 129
Sunday Morning	p. 130
He-Who-May-Say	p. 130
Some Notes on Courage	p. 135
In the Beginning	p. 135
Jeanne d'Arc	p. 136
Mary	p. 137
The Widow	p. 138
Man Arrested in Hacking Death Tells Police He Mistook Mother-in-Law for Raccoon	p. 140
The Man Who Loves Coal	p. 140
Paris Aubade	p. 142
New Physics	p. 142
Poem to the Ideal Reader	p. 143
Lasting	p. 144
Directions	p. 149
First Radio	p. 150
Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann	p. 150
Shooting Baskets at Dusk	p. 151
Cold Quilt	p. 152
Uncle Homer Meets Carl Sandburg	p. 153
Sad Girl Sitting on a Running Board	p. 154
Married Couples on Vacation	p. 155
Wilder Brain Collection, Cornell University	p. 156
Backwards through the Baptist Hymnal	p. 159
Breadstuff	p. 163
Total Eclipse	p. 163
Gone to Ground	p. 165
Twila Jo and the Wrestler	p. 166
Leda Talks	p. 167
Young Woman in the Shoe	p. 168
In the Natural Course of Things	p. 169
In Danger	p. 170
Tap Water	p. 171
Loss of Memory	p. 172
Delight	p. 172
Cloudless Sulfur, Swallowtail, Great Spangled Fritillary	p. 173
Target	p. 174
Full Color	p. 175
Good Things	p. 176
Mountain Bride	p. 181
Face	p. 182
Double Springs	p. 183
Bricking the Church	p. 184
Earache	p. 185
Blackberries	p. 185
Lightning Bug	p. 186
Radio	p. 187
White Autumn	p. 187
The Gift of Tongues	p. 189
Chant Royal	p. 190
Sigodlin	p. 191
Audubon's Flute	p. 192
Dead Dog on the Highway	p. 193
Odometer	p. 194
Rearview Mirror	p. 195
Vietnam War Memorial	p. 195
Writing Spider	p. 196
Mountain Graveyard	p. 197
Heaven	p. 197
The Dream of a House	p. 201
Annunciation	p. 203
Resurrection	p. 204
The Annual Heron	p. 206
Rest	p. 212
The Dream of Refusal	p. 213
I Am Transmuting	p. 214
15 March 1987 (To W.S.P.)	p. 215
16 March 1987 (To W.S.P.)	p. 215
Farewell with Photographs	p. 216
It All Comes Together Outside the Restroom in Hogansville	p. 219
Think Back	p. 220
Drilling for Fire	p. 220
The Hand That Becomes You	p. 223
When Once Friends	p. 224
Faith as an Arm of Culture, Culture as an Arm of Narration	p. 226
Clouds over Islands	p. 227
Where Our Voices Broke Off	p. 228
Audubon Drive, Memphis	p. 229
Mountains by Moonlight	p. 231
An Aubade from Verlaine's Day	p. 237
Still Water	p. 237
My Quaker-Atheist Friend, Who Has Come to This Meeting-House since 1913, Smokes and Looks Out over the Rawthey to Holme Fell	p. 238
Symphony No. 5, in C Sharp Minor	p. 239
Dealer's Choice and the Dealer Shuffles	p. 241
Blue Ball Blues	p. 242
Who Is Little Enis?	p. 243
Orange County Blues	p. 245
Red Pig Barbecue #2, Concord	p. 246
The Anthropophagites Get Down on a Barbecue Sign on Highway NC 107 South of Hamlet	p. 246
A Rhyme without End for Howard Finster about How It All Began in the Country near Lookout	p. 246
Daddy Bostain, the Moses of the Wing Community Moonshiners, Laments from His Deathbed the Spiritual Estate of One of His Soul-Saving Neighbors	p. 247
Aunt Dory Ellis, of Penland, Remembers When She Fell in Her Garden at the Home Place and Broke Her Hip in 19 and 56	p. 247
Miss Lucy Morgan Shows Me a Photograph of Mrs. Mary Grindstaff Spinning Wool on the High Wheel	p. 248
The Ancient of Days	p. 248
A Valediction for My Father, Ben Williams (1898-1974)	p. 249
About the Poets	p. 251
Index of Titles	p. 265
Index of First Lines	p. 269
Permissions	p. 273
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.