Literary Charleston : A Lowcountry Reader

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780941711173
• ISBN10: 094171117X
• Format: Trade Book
• Publisher: Wyrick & Co

Summary

To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, "There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood." I would say. "Breathe deeply," and you would breathe and remember tjat smell for the rest of your life, the bold, fecund aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite ans sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk, semen, and spilled wine, all perfumed with seawater. My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of indrawn tides. I am a patriot of a singular geography on the planet; I speak of my country religiously; I am proud of its landscape. I walk through the traffic of cities cautiously, always nimble and on the alert, because my heart belongs in the marshlands. The boy in me still carries the memories of those days when I lifted crab pots out of the Colleton River before dawn, when I ws shaped by life on the river, part child, part saristan of tides.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Acknowledgements	xv
Introduction	xix
Prologue
William Bartram
from The Travels of William Bartram	3	(4)
The Charleston School
Paul Hamilton Hayne
Aspects of the Pines	7	(1)
Laocoon	8	(1)
Magnolia Gardens	8	(1)
William Gilmore Simms
The Edge of the Swamp	9	(3)
Ephraim Bartlett, the Edisto Raftsman	12	(15)
Henry Timrod
Charleston	27	(1)
The Cotton Boll	28	(5)
Ode. Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead, at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867.	33	(4)
Sea Island Lore
William Elliott
A Day at Chee-ha	37	(7)
Edgar Allan Poe
The Gold Bug	44	(41)
Early Twentieth Century Influences
Henry James
from The American Scene	85	(7)
Amy Lowell
Charleston. South Carolina	92	(1)
The Middleton Place	93	(1)
Epitaph In A Churchyard In Charleston, South Carolina	94	(1)
Owen Wister
from Lady Baltimore	95	(10)
The Poetry Society of South Carolina in the 1920s
Hervey Allen
Alchemy	105	(1)
John Bennett
The Wandering Minstrel's Song	106	(1)
DuBose Heyward
Dusk	107	(1)
Buzzard Island	108	(1)
Josephine Pinckney
Sea-Drinking Cities	109	(1)
Hag	110	(1)
Beatrice Witte Ravenel
Tidewater	111	(2)
The Pirates	113	(7)
The Yemassee Lands	120	(5)
``Renaissance'' Charleston and Beyond
John Bennett
Madame Margot	125	(17)
John Galsworthy
A Hedonist	142	(8)
DuBose Heyward
from Porgy	150	(16)
Ludwig Lewisohn
from The Case of Mr. Crump	166	(9)
Rafael Sabatini
from The Carolinian	175	(16)
Herbert Ravenel Sass
Carolina Marshes	191	(12)
Contemporary Poetry
James Dickey
The Salt Marsh	203	(1)
Slave Quarters	204	(6)
August Kleinzahler
Longitude Lane	210	(1)
Nick Lindsay
Pilot Boat	211	(1)
Poem	212	(2)
Wendy Salinger
Seasmoke	214	(2)
Charleston, South Carolina, 7 P.M.	216	(5)
Contemporary Prose
Pat Conroy
from The Prince of Tides	221	(18)
Shelby Foote
from The Civil War: A Narrative	239	(12)
William Price Fox
Coley Moke	251	(8)
Monck's Corner	259	(3)
Harlan Greene
from Why We Never Danced the Charleston	262	(14)
Josephine Humphreys
from Rich in Love	276	(17)
Nick Lindsay
from An Oral History of Edisto Island: Sam Gadsden Tells the Story	293	(20)
from An Oral History of Edisto Island: The Life and Times of Bubberson Brown	313	(2)
Walker Percy
from The Last Gentleman	315	(8)
Padgett Powell
from Edisto	323	(7)
Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
Finisterre	330	(33)
Epilogue
Andy Warhol
Love (Prime)	363	(6)
Selected Bibliography	369	(10)
Index	379

Excerpts

Paul Hamilton Hayne Aspects of the Pines Tall, sombre, grim, against the morning sky They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs,