When I retired from the library in 1999, I looked forward to having more time for my own writing. But after a year I realized that something was lacking. I missed meeting and working with fellow writers. I needed the fulfillment of contributing to the world of writing, not just creating my own.
I decided that teaching writing in my home might help fill the void. I sent out a word-of-mouth announcement, and six women joined my class. Instead of giving lectures, I simply allowed the students to pick my brain for what I know about writing. I taught them how to edit both their own and their colleagues’ work. I asked each new student to select a subject she wanted to work on—essays, poems, a memoir, a play, or a novel. I promised to help them reach the place where we considered the work ready to be sent out.
I have known the joy of seeing my students become better writers, some getting their work published. In the years when I worked as associate editor of Mountain Life & Work and, especially, as editor of Appalachian Heritage, what I most enjoyed was getting acquainted with new writers and helping them to get published.
It is gratifying to attend conferences and workshops and have people seek me out and thank me for their first publications. Some of them have gone on to become well-known writers. Several have won prizes for their work. In return, over the years I have gleaned words of wisdom and advice from good writers that have become my own guidelines.
To prepare for my first at-home class, I brought together materials about writing. I told my new students that there are three key activities to remember when writing:
Feel—Clarity, sentence flow, pace, rhythm, movement.
Tighten—Less is best.
Polish—Reword, rephrase, and repicture.
I also advise students to avoid using more than fifteen words in any sentence—unless it really “swings” with more! To help them craft their sentences, I tell them the following:
•Do not use the same word twice in a sentence, or even a paragraph, unless you do so deliberately for emphasis.
•Avoid using the word “that” more than once in a sentence.
•Never use more than one adjective at a time. If you use two or more you have not found the right one.
I tell students to work with the sound of words (rolling thunder, soothing rain, sharp winds, silence of the snow, the crack of ice, crystal clarity, snap, crackle, pop), and the color of words (silver on the poplar leaf, gold on the willow stem, morning-glory blue, black night, gray fog, dusky dark). I also tell them to pay attention to the portent of words, both their meaning and their connotation.
I try to write the way little children talk. Children express themselves with absolute clarity before adults make them lose self-confidence and cause them to become afraid of expressing themselves simply and directly. There is no artifice in children. They are honest and bold when they express their true feelings.
Given my love of words and the joy that I feel when I write, it was inevitable that I would write a poem about words.
The Living Word
Is sought by poets and writers.
It often comes at just the right time
To turn a phrase, make a perfect rhyme.
Then come the ecstasy and the pain
As hard and gentle as falling rain
On April fields plowed for planting.
The Living Word
Comes in unexpected places:
An autumn leaf floating to the ground,
A winter bell calling, the sound
Ringing clear across the miles. The pain
Of a good-bye in summer. Thunder followed by rain
Falling on the sleeping fields.
The Living Word
Comes in various shapes and sizes:
Icicles hanging from the eaves,
Wind blowing among ice-laden trees,
And all white flowers in May. A silver brook,
A loaf of bread, a well-read book,
June roses for a bridal bouquet.
The Living Word
Is found in many places:
In a red apple on a backyard tree,
In a blueberry pie baked for me
By Granny Reed. In red clover
And sunset when the day turns over
To sink and rest in the cool black night.
The Living Word
Will come to poets and writers
Who eat and drink living words.
I used to think of poetry as water, and not just because water is essential to life. When it rained long enough for little springs to gush out from the hillsides, out of crawdad holes, out from underneath rocks, and run down little gullies, I spent some of my happiest hours outside. I played in the tiny streams, channeling one into another until I had larger ones running together until they reached level ground. Playing in water and looking for new streams became symbolic of poetry to me.
My great-grandmother, Granny Brock, and other mountain women worked hard, cooking, cleaning, spinning, and caring for home and family from daylight to dark. They made all of their family’s clothes and warm quilts for their beds. They found creative satisfaction in their quilts and embroidered pieces.
Today there is not so much need for quilts and warm clothing. Mountain women no longer have the opportunity to satisfy their creative talent as they work. Instead, they write stories and poems, weave tapestries, and paint pictures to satisfy their creative urge. I needed an outlet for my creative urge, and I found it especially satisfying to write poetry.
Over the years people have tried to define poetry. Some say it is like trying to paint the wind. Others call it “the language of amazement.” It has been said that “science is for people who learn; poetry is for people who know.” John Donne says poetry is counterfeit creation. Robert Frost says that poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that if prose is the right word in the right order, poetry must be the best word in the best order.
I took a poetry class one semester while I was a student at Berea College. One Friday assignment was to write ten haiku and bring them to class on the following Monday.
Up to that time I had never read a haiku, let alone knew what kind of poem it was. The professor explained the form and suggested we read a collection or two before we began our assignment. I doubted I would be able to write even one decent haiku, let alone ten of them.
That weekend I began both reading and trying to write that form of poetry. Here are the ten I turned in the following Monday:
Death
Facing east he lies.
Morning sun touches his grave
My heart is still dark.
Fear
Verbena blossoms,
Darkness gallops up the hill,
Quick! Hide your children.
Reality
Battered old woman
Selling flowers in the street.
Ah, look, my mother!
Blackbirds
Thirty-three blackbirds
Stripping the tender green corn.
Scarecrow meditates.
Faith
Homemade grave basket
Adorning our piano.
Music does not die!
Revelation
Raindrops falling, break
And wet the silver lichen
Look! A burning bush.
Lost Love
Ah, shattered dewdrops—
Crystal pieces of a broken dream.
It ended today.
Curiosity
A snowball bloomed out
In July instead of May
Wonder what it means?
Grace
Angry waves dash high
Noise is wasted energy
Manna falls at dawn.
Experience
Sad with her knowing
Earth sighs and covers her face
With old and tender leaves.
Dr. Sears, the teacher of that course, gave us many assignments throughout the semester, but none was more challenging than w
riting haiku.
I fell in love with the discipline required for this form. Most of my poems in my first book of poetry, Headwaters, are in free verse, but a few are written to form. I like to think of poetry as freedom within discipline. First you learn the techniques and forms, and only after learning those do you take wing and fly.
MY FIRST BOOK, Appalachian Women: An Annotated Bibliography, was published in 1981. It grew out of the first independent study I did at Berea. Loyal Jones, one of my sponsors, suggested that I see if the University Press of Kentucky might like to publish it. An editor came to Berea each spring to talk with prospective authors on campus. Berea College was part of a consortium with the state university system. This meant that a committee on campus first had to agree the manuscript was worth publishing. If the committee agreed to publish, Berea College would pay 50 percent of the publication costs. Revenue from sales of the book would then go to Berea College until the college was reimbursed.
Putting all the annotations into manuscript form was a big job for me. At the end I had 1,800 index cards. A very good friend of the College Library, Alfred Perrin, offered to pay a typist to get it ready to show a publisher. The University Press of Kentucky accepted it for publication, and the book came out in the spring of 1981. It garnered good reviews in both print and on radio broadcasts and was used by students, classes, authors, researchers, and others.
My next book also began as an independent study, after a suggestion made by James Still. I first met this well-known Appalachian writer when I was associate editor oiMountain Life & Work, and he became my mentor and my friend for more than thirty years. One day, on a visit to Berea, he invited me to lunch. In the restaurant he talked about mountain food and how it was cooked before the advent of electricity and microwave cooking. “You know, the old ways are fading out,” he said. “Someone should write a book about mountain food. I can’t do a book like that, but you can.” I was amazed when he offered to tell his agent about it.
Thus inspired to collect recipes of Appalachian cooks, I found a sponsor for the project in Berea’s Home Economics Department. On the advice of my sponsors and friends, I submitted the manuscript to the University of Pittsburgh Press, which at that time was interested in publishing regional works. After some rewriting and editing, the manuscript was accepted. More than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections was published in 1983. It was widely reviewed in this country and in England. Reprinted six times, it has earned more royalties than all my other books combined.
My next book was another cookbook. Table Talk came out in 1995. For it, I received a grant to help with expenses as I traveled to different states, interviewing a variety of Appalachian residents about their history with food. I started each chapter with a brief introduction, then deleted my questions from the interviews so as to allow the rest of each chapter to be in the interviewees’ own voices, with their favorite recipes printed at the end of each chapter. I am proud that my two cookbooks, More than Moonshine and Table Talk, have preserved the history of mountain people and mountain cooks.
My first book about Tom Sawyer, What Tom Sawyer Learned from Dying, was published in 1993. It described Tom’s early years, his near-death experience at the age of thirty-three, and how that experience changed his life.
When friends and coworkers heard about my plans to write a book about Tom, several implored me not to do it. In essence, they said I had established a good reputation for myself as an Appalachian writer. To do a book that was so different—so “New Age”—would hurt that reputation. When people told me this, I felt some of the same feelings I’d had when Dad came to my house and cried because I wouldn’t agree to join the Holiness Church. Was I right in believing God had chosen me to write Tom’s story? Intuitively I felt I must do the book. The idea haunted me—it would not go away.
Tom Sawyer and the Spiritual Whirlwind, published in 2000, was about Tom’s trips to Tibet and his meeting and assisting the Dalai Lama in Canada. The book includes a chapter about a tornado in Berea in 1996, when Tom was at my home.
Getting to know Tom, witness his work, and hear his teachings has answered many of my questions about God and church. The two books I have published about Tom Sawyer and his near-death experience have sold widely. I have received many letters and telephone calls from appreciative readers.
Headwaters, my first book of poetry, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. This book is a collection of poems written from my early years until when I met Tom Sawyer. I am so grateful that Mary Holliman at Virginia Technical College in Blacksburg, Virginia, who owned Pocahontas Press, took a chance on publishing my first poetry book. I am currentiy working on a second collection.
The Spoonbread Cookbook I published myself in 1996. It was compiled at the request of the Berea Chamber of Commerce when they were planning the first Spoonbread Festival in Berea. It has sold well.
Like many writers, I have had my share of rejection letters. I know all too well what getting such a letter feels like. While I was editor of Appalachian Heritage, the hardest task I had was rejecting submissions. If I could not use a writer’s work, I wrote a personal letter explaining why. Sometimes I gave advice about how I thought the piece could be improved.
I always love to attend the writers’ workshops at Hindman, Kentucky. In August, participants come from North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, and a number of other states across the country to the lovely settlement town of Hindman, which sits in a small valley completely surrounded by hills. At the time of the writers’ workshops, everything is lush and green from spring rains, and flowers are blooming everywhere you look. In this neat, wellgroomed pocket of civilization, you can sit in a rocking chair on the porch and look into the spaces between trees in the uncut forest, which come down the hill just a few yards from the porch. No matter how hot it gets during the day, at night it cools off, and the next morning dawns cool and damp from heavy dew. Many of the workshop participants, including me, rise early. After getting a cup of coffee in the dining room, we sit in the rocking chairs on the porch and read, meditate, write, or chat with others while waiting for the bell to ring for breakfast.
The workshops feature classes on the writing of novels, poetry, children’s books, and nonfiction. A number of participants find success with regional and national publishers. Some return to teach classes at the workshop.
In July 2004, the Appalachian Writers Association named me the Appalachian writer who contributed most to the region and its people.
And in December 2005 I was named Writing Sister of the Year by the New Opportunity School for Women Writers. I was given a scrapbook containing letters of appreciation for my books, my teaching, and my mentoring. The letter from Linda Caldwell, an internationally published writer, sums up what most of the letters and comments say.
Sidney,
You have been a mentor to Appalachian writers and especially to Appalachian women writers. For this we admire you.
You have been a rock for the NOSW Writers over these past five years. You have gently encouraged writing, revising, and submitting. You have been a quiet cheerleader and wise woman. For this we love you.
Your excellent example in writing and life has given a pattern to follow. For this we admire you.
You are a model woman that all would like to be. You “walk in beauty.”
I am ever so privileged to know you.
With love and respect,
Linda Caldwell
Writing has been an essential part of my life for as long as I can remember. It has brought me recognition, some money, and a sense of fulfillment that nothing else brings. My books go out into the world and make new friends for me. They serve as teaching tools for those I cannot reach.
I am glad I am a writer. I am privileged to have worked with well-established authors, and especially with brand-new ones, sharing their elation in being published for the first time.
24
As the Sun Go
es Down
The last lingering rays of sun paint the Pilot
Knob hills in pale gold, and highlight a distant
tree. Smudges of charcoal-colored clouds drift in
the pale pink sky that the sunset left behind. It is
time to go inside to the big warm kitchen for the
evening meal.
Berea, Kentucky, is situated directly on the old Wilderness Road, which brought the first settlers into Kentucky. Daniel Boone came through Cumberland Gap for the first time on a hunting trip, and later a band of thirty men with axes cut the Wilderness Road into Kentucky. This opened the great west for one of the mightiest migrations in human history. From 1775 to 1796, more than 200,000 men, women, and children traveled over the Wilderness Road on horseback and on foot, seeking homes in mid-America and the northwest.
The town of Berea grew up around Berea College, which was founded in 1855. The college was founded to promote the ideal of Christian brotherhood and equality on a nonsectarian and interracial basis. Berea College experienced some turbulent days and nights both before and after the Civil War.
Berea is an area as varied as Kentucky itself; and it has been my home since 1962.
AT FIRST I FOUND LIVING IN BEREA so different than where I’d grown up. I missed the presence of tall mountains. I liked the convenience of city life, but I longed to wade in creeks again, to hear whippoorwills calling in the evenings, to hear cowbells ringing as cows were driven home for milking.
My older son, Dennis Wayne, was eleven years old when we moved to Berea from Indianapolis; my son Bruce Alan was born in Berea. I feel that in a way I grew up in Berea along with my boys.
Being on the Mountain Life & Work staff in the mid-1960s, I was privileged to meet some of the workers engaged in the War on Poverty. I met both established and emerging writers. I learned more about Appalachia and my people by viewing them through the eyes of newcomers.
In 1984, before Dr. John Stephenson was inaugurated president of Berea College, I was initiated into the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi and was named by the national office to represent Phi Kappa Phi at the inauguration. This was astounding to me—that I, from the hills of southeastern Kentucky, a new college graduate, would be able to don a cap and gown and participate in the activities.
My Appalachia Page 25