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Page 55
The lineman knows that she is beautiful:
he spent an hour working at the pole
to watch her hanging clothes, but he
will never tell her, and she
will never know why spring;
why the sight of her young ones growing,
makes her sad.
MY FATHER. HIS RABBITS.
from Lord of Springs (1990)
In my dreams they return as they should,
my father's rabbits I loosed one day
when I was four, the year
that he, too, left—
not suspecting how wildly they strained
toward field and wood,
or that even our deep yard, rimmed with roses,
seemed merely extension of cage.
They appeared reliable and tame
as I whispered through the wire, worked the latches,
remained with me for awhile
browsing clover—their fur, their markings
intact, in health and lovely.
Perhaps it would not have occurred
to desert roof, kin, feed—pit hunger against hunger
in a dark rife with owls and traps—
if I had not thought to free them.
Most, we never saw again.
But one or two came
back to the edge of our lawn
thinner, harried—like him
to visit, but never quite within.
It is only in my dreams
I welcome them truly home.
Salving their wounded eyes, patching
ears torn by gun and thunder
I lift them into their pens, shut the doors,
making all as it was before.
My father. His rabbits.
BACKWOODS HAIKU
from Lord of Springs (1990)
I. From tree tops
wisteria seed pods crack,
pop-guns triggered by fall sun.
II. Vines thick as trunks
detail a house once here,
buried trace of char
its fate.
III. Dried cones, white pine, drop
like resinous snow
I gather to make fires glow.
IV. Solstice; equinox. They too struggled
to stay warm: extreme
and balance.
V. I take my sack downhill
against the cold, dreaming
woodstove elegance.
VERNA MAE SLONE
(October 9, 1914–)
Verna Mae Slone grew up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, near the town of Pippa Passes. Her formal education ended before she had completed high school because her family needed her to work.
She wrote her first book, What My Heart Wants to Tell, when she was in her sixties. The original manuscript was written in longhand and intended for her grandchildren, because “so many lies and half-truths have been written about us, the mountain people.”
When excerpts of Slone's reminiscences were read on National Public Radio, an editor at New Republic Books asked to publish the entire manuscript. “I believed you had to have a college education before you would be accepted as a writer,” says Slone. “Because I believed that, I was the most surprised person of all that What My Heart Wants to Tell did get recognized and published.”
Slone is the tenth generation of her family to live in eastern Kentucky, and she bristles at the hillbilly stereotypes so often applied to the region. “These lies and half-truths have done our children more damage than anything else,” writes Slone. “They have taken more from us than the large coal and gas companies did by cheating our forefathers out of their minerals, for that was just money. Their writers have taken our pride and dignity and have disgraced us in the eyes of the outside world.”
In this scene from her autobiography What My Heart Wants to Tell, Slone recounts the life and death of her handicapped sister, Alverta.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Nonfiction: What My Heart Wants to Tell (1979). Fiction: Rennie's Way (1994).
SECONDARY
“Verna Mae Slone [bio and autobiography],” in Table Talk: Appalachian Meals and Memories (1995), ed. Sidney Saylor Farr, 3–17. Carla Waldemar, “Old Kentucky Home,” The Christian Science Monitor 71:110 (2 May 1979), 19.
WHAT MY HEART WANTS TO TELL (1979)
Chapter Twenty
Sarah Alverta was my sister's name but I always called her Sissy. She was born with a normal mental capacity, but when she was eighteen months old, she had a fever that lasted six weeks. The doctor called it a brain fever. When she recovered she could not talk and her mind never grew anymore, but remained as the mind of a two year old. She might have been taught some if she had had the right teacher. We ourselves could have done more for her, if we had been rash with her; but we loved her so much we gave her her way in everything. The whole household was run to suit what we thought was best for her. My sister Vada was the one who loved her the most and took constant care of her, sleeping with her at night, washing her clothes, even diapers.
She was a few years older than me, but I soon learned that whatever she wanted of mine, I was supposed to give her. I did not resent this because I had been taught that she was someone very special. I remember once I had a fried egg in my plate and she reached with her hand and took it and ate it. I thought it was a big joke and laughed.
Once we were playing near the chair shop where my father was making chairs. The little nobs or ends of wood that were left as scraps from the ends of the finished chair post made very nice playthings. With a child's imagination they could become anything from a father and mother with a whole family, to a table covered with pots and pans. To me they could be anything. All Sissy liked to do was beat them together to make a loud noise, or pile them up in a large heap and then kick them over.
I can remember many happy hours playing with Sissy and these wooden scraps. But what I am going to tell you next was told to me by my father.
He heard a loud noise, looked out, and found me pulling and tugging at Sissy. She was hitting me and kicking but I would not let go. Both of us were screaming and crying.
My father came running and parted us and demanded, “What are ye doing? Ye know ye must never fight with Alverta.”
“But, Papa,” I said, “there was a big worm. It might bite Sissy.”
He went back to where we had been playing and he found a large copperhead, which he killed.
We did not get much candy, but each time my father went to the store he always brought back three large red and white peppermint sticks of candy, which were called “saw logs.” There was one for each of us: Alverta, Edna, and me—the youngest of all the kids. Sissy wouldn't eat candy. I don't know if she just did not like the taste, or if it hurt her several decayed teeth. But she loved the red and white striped color, so she always wanted one, mostly to play with. My father would always tell me, “Now don't ye take Alverta's candy, but ye watch her and when she gets tired of playing with it, you can have it to eat.” I would follow her around for hours, and sometimes wait until she took a nap, but sooner or later, I got her candy.
Alverta loved anything that was red. One Christmas my sister Vada got a large apron, which was then known as a coverall. It was something like a sleeveless dress that opened up and down the back. The color was a bright red with a small, springly, flowered design. Alverta fell in love with it at once and Vada cut it up and made a dress for Sissy. She had this pretty red dress on that Easter morning that had such a sad ending.
Several boys had met in the large “bottom” or meadow just across from our home at the mouth of Trace to play a game of “round town,” a game somewhat like baseball. Lots of girls had come to watch from our porch and yard. Everyone was having a good time. It was Easter and everyone had on their new clothes for the occasion.
When we heard a terrible scream, everyone ran in the house and found Alverta's clothes on fire. Lorenda ran for the water bucket, whic
h was empty. Vada began tearing at the burning clothes, but before Renda could get a bucket of water from the well, Alverta's clothes were burned.
My father had just been gone for a few hours on his way to Wheelwright, where he had a job as a “planer” in a carpenter shop.
Someone sent for a nurse who stayed at the Caney school. Someone said, “Who will go overtake Isom?” Hazy Caudill said, “I have the fastest mule, so I will go.”
In my childish trusting mind I thought “everything will be alright again, when Papa gits here.” The next thing I remember was running to meet him, when I saw him coming, and he hugged me until it hurt. I did not know until later that he had been told I had been the one who got burnt.
Sissy lived until about midnight. I can still see my father as he pulled the sheet up over her head and told the nurse, “It's over.”
BARBARA SMITH
(March 21, 1929–)
Barbara Smith was born in Wisconsin but has lived in West Virginia for much of her adult life. She and her husband moved from New York City in 1960 to take teaching positions at Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi, West Virginia, “because we both wanted to teach in a church-related liberal arts college away from the city streets.”
Smith earned degrees from Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and the University of Wisconsin. She has published more than three hundred poems, short stories, and articles in a wide variety of publications including Antietam Review, English Journal, and Appalachian Heritage. She has published seven books of nonfiction.
Smiths first novel, Six Miles Out, was published in 1981. A second novel, The Circumstance of Death, was published in 2001. Novelist Lee Smith describes Smith as a “fearless writer. She has always been willing to take on the really tough themes, the themes most of us turn away from.”
Smith is Emerita Professor of Literature and Writing and former Chair of the Division of Humanities at Alderson-Broaddus College. She makes her home in Philippi, West Virginia, where she works as a freelance writer and editor.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Novels: The Circumstance of Death (2001), Six Miles Out (1981). Nonfiction: Community Ministries, Work for Today: Ministering with the Unemployed (1990). Poetry: Demonstrative Pronouns (unpublished collection). Poetry editor: Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry, 1950–1999 (2000), Coming Together (1995), Weeping with Those Who Weep: Poems of Bereavement (1986, 1998), What the Mountains Yield: A Collection from West Virginia Writers (1986, 1998). Plays: With Blissful Hope, Miss Emma and E.J. Autobiographical essay: “Inside Discoveries,” in Bloodroot (1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 273–76.
SECONDARY
Joyce Dyer, “Barbara Smith,” in Bloodroot, 272. Genie Jacobson, review of Circumstance of Death, Now & Then 20.1 (spring 2003), 35. Parks Lanier, “A Conversation with Barbara Smith,” 21st annual Highland Summer Conference [videorecording], Radford University, 18 June 1998. Felicia Mitchell, “From Image to Epiphany: Barbara Smith's Poetic Moments,” in Her Words (2002), ed. Felicia Mitchell, 288–97.
BAD NEWS
from Weeping with Those Who Weep: Poems of Bereavement (1998)
So there I was simply filling the gas tank
When you cruised in and calmly reported
You are dying of cancer.
So what was I supposed to do,
Straining to hear your husky words,
Trying not to flicker an eyelid
Nor imagine the bleeding, the vomit, the pain,
While the gas was spilling and filling my shoes?
Well, I'll tell you tomorrow, as I told you today,
We're all dying, some just a little faster than others—
And missing more—
Like singing and watching the children grow up—
And I asked about Martha and paid for the gas,
Registering forever the look in your eyes,
Wanting me to say just something, more,
So I'll tell you tomorrow, as I told you today,
We're all dying. But I won't believe it
As I tear through the gears driving back up the hill
And split the hell out of the firewood in the yard
And scrub floors until my knuckles are red
And as raw as your throat.
Then I'll bake two blackberry pies,
And I'll bring one warm to the shadows on your porch
And offer it, still not saying the words,
But you'll know,
And I'll know.
We're all dying.
AND THIS IS THE WAY TO BE POOR
from Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel (1998)
Wearing the same jeans and T-shirt
And the purple plastic earrings
Bought for a quarter at the Salvation Army.
Buying Big League Chew
So your kids will think candy
But won't swallow the bubblegum
And won't cry for hotdogs
For at least ten more minutes.
Asking for gas in one gallon shots,
Pretending you don't want to change a twenty.
Paying the water bill after three warnings
And disconnecting the telephone instead.
Using the food stamps for day-old bread
And year-old sans-label cans of whatever.
Smelling not half as good as the woman in front of you
And wondering why the hell you came
To see the teachers, the principal, who smile tight-lipped
And tell you that Georgie is doing just fine
When you know he can't even read a cereal box
And nobody gives a damn.
That's poor.
THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY
from New River Free Press (1997)
It has to twang,
Snap back and sting your fingers
When it breaks or gets away from you,
Elastic with emotional pressure,
Its fibers clasping each other,
Reaching for a fit as perfect
As Paul Tillich's grave in Harmony, Indiana,
Where the cedar trees, the native rocks,
The needles that you walk upon
Speak even as they draw you in
And pull you back when you try to walk away.
I feel them, hear them even now,
The syllables of aspen leaves,
The words of waterfalls,
The stanzas of stones.
They make the whole world vibrate.
EFFIE WALLER SMITH
(January 6, 1879–January 2, 1960)
Eastern Kentucky poet Effie Waller Smith was the daughter of Sibbie and Frank Waller, former slaves who saw to it that all of their children received an education, even though educational opportunities at the turn of the century for black and white students in Pike County, Kentucky, were extremely limited. Smith and her siblings all attended local segregated state schools and then earned teaching certificates at the Kentucky State Normal School for Colored Persons in Frankfort.
Smith was writing poetry by the time she was sixteen. Her diction reflects her reading of classical literature as well as popular, contemporary writers of the day.
In February 1908, she married Charley Smith, a deputy sheriff. The marriage was an unhappy one, and although it survived the death of a child, it ultimately ended in divorce. Charley Smith later died of a shotgun wound in the line of duty during a moonshine raid.
In 1918, she joined a religious commune in Waukesha, Wisconsin; although she left the commune after four years, she remained in Wisconsin until her death in 1960. Smith was the author of several short stories and three books of poetry.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Poetry and short stories: The Collected Works of Effie Waller Smith (1991). Poetry: Rosemary and Pansies (1909), Rhymes from the Cumberland (1909), Songs of the Months (1904).
SECONDARY
David Deskins, “Black Pioneer Poet: Effie Wa
ller Smith,” Appalachian Heritage (fall 1991), 66. David Deskins, “Effie Waller Smith: An Echo Within the Hills,” The Kentucky Review 8:3 (autumn 1988), 26–46. David Deskins with Jennifer Kovach, “Introduction,” The Collected Works of Effie Waller Smith (1991), 3–26.
MEMORIES OF HOME
from The Collected Works of Effie Waller Smith (1991)
Thoughts of the dear old homestead
Haunt my memory to-day;
Thoughts of my home, my childhood's home
Far away, far, far away.
Far away in East Kentucky,
There beneath her towering hills,
Rich in forestry and beauty,
Watered well with brooks and rills,
On a farm—the old, old homestead—
Which to me is still endeared,
I was born a baby tiny,
And to womanhood was reared.
Lilacs purple, roses yellow,
Massive blooms of snow-balls white,
Beautiful the ample door-yard
In the sunny springtime bright.
Woodbines sweet and morning-glories
Rife with butterflies and bees
Climbed and clambered round the doorway
In the sunshine and the breeze.
Often rang through that old farm house
Childish voices gay and sweet;
Oft its walls of log have echoed
Patter of the childish feet.
Down below the apple orchard
From a fern-clad mossy bank
Where the naiads love to linger,
Where the elders, tall and rank,
And the willows cast their shadows,
Where the night-birds sweetly sing
To the moonlight and the starlight,
Bubbled forth a sylvan spring.
Oh, my eyes are getting tear-filled,