A Poem by Robert Morgan

Canning Time

The floor was muddy with the juice of peaches
and my mother's thumb, bandaged for the slicing,
watersobbed. She and Aunt Wessie skinned
bushels that day, fat Georgia Belles
slit streaming into the pot. Their knives
paid out limp bands onto the heap
of parings. It took care to pack the jars,
reaching in to stack the halves
firm without bruising, and lowering
the heavy racks into the boiler already
trembling with steam, the stove malignant
in heat. As Wessie wiped her face
the kitchen sweated its sweet filth.
In that hell they sealed the quickly browning
flesh in capsules of honey, making crystals
of separate air across the vacuums.
The heat and pressure were enough to grow
diamonds as they measured hot
syrup into quarts. By supper the last jar
was set on the counter to cool
into isolation. Later in the night
each little urn would pop as it
achieved its private atmosphere and
we cooled into sleep, the stove now
neutral. The stones already
pecked clean in the yard were free to try
again for the sun. The orchard meat fixed in
cells would be taken down cellar in the
morning to stay gold like specimens
set out and labeled, a vegetal
battery we'd hook up later. The women
too tired to rest easily think of
the treasure they've laid up today
for preservation at coffin level, down there
where moth and rust and worms corrupt,
a first foundation of shells to be
fired at the winter's muddy back.

(from Groundwork. Frankfort, Kentucky, Gnomon Press. 1979)

Literature and the Land

Here in the Appalachian Mountains, there is a special bond between the Land, the People, and the Literature that seems to exude from this region like sap. One of the best Christmas presents I received this year, besides the little tins of gourmet coffee my mother gave me, was a book from my father and stepmother by Georgann Eubanks entitled Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook. Many people have put together travel guides of North Carolina in the past, from touring the back roads to Hollywood film shoot locations, but this one I found delightfully different. Not only are there detailed directions, points of interest connecting place with the authors who stayed there or wrote about it, but the whole book is peppered with authors’ poems, fiction excerpts, and commentary on the place or setting. From Paula Steichen describing her grandfather Carl Sandburg, Robert Morgan describing the French Broad steamboat The Mountain Lily, to Sharyn McCrumb writing about Frankie Silver, this book runs the gamut with 18 tours of the North Carolina Mountains through the eyes of the writer. Some literature references surprised me, like the fact that Henry James once stayed in the Biltmore House and criticized it for being so isolated in such an impoverished part of the country. Some of Eubanks praises for the showcased writers or transitions into the literature excerpts do seem saccharine or forced, but this isn’t a book of literary critique, and reference books aren’t expected to wax poetic, so I can overlook it considering the monumental research from so many varied sources and the detail that went into this book. I’m looking forward to taking this book on a few adventures this summer for sure!

The Old Kentucky Home

In the process of reading the above-mentioned book, Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains, I found a particular author excerpt catching. Poet and Asheville native Michael McFee wrote an engaging account just for this guidebook on his experiences discovering Thomas Wolfe’s home, and I thought I would share it with the Wide-Web World:

“When I was growing up in the mountains, from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s, Asheville wasn’t such a groovy little city, Thomas Wolfe’s name wasn’t so ubiquitous, and his mother’s boardinghouse wasn’t yet an official historic site. “The Old Kentucky Home” was just 48 Spruce Street, where Tom’s brother Fred offered occasional tours of the twenty-nine rooms. He didn’t seem to like the house or his family very much: when my mother and I first visited, in 1968, I remember he pointed out, unapprovingly, where his famous younger sibling crept along the roof to sneak into a female guest’s room.
“A few years later, after I read Look Homeward, Angel (at sixteen: just the right age, just the right place), I went back solo, and the ramshackle place was much more interesting: it had become Wolfe’s “Dixieland,” and its drafty high-ceilinged rooms – some dim, some sunny – seemed haunted with ghosts of stories, the place itself a rambling gossipy character.
“I headed off to college in 1972 to study design, but soon transferred to Wolfe’s alma mater and decided to become a writer myself. When a dozen-storied hotel opened right across Spruce Street from his house in the mid-1970s, I heard that copies of Look Homeward, Angel had been placed in each bedside table drawer, beside the Gideon’s Bibles. Who could resist such a detail? I put it into a poem called “Asheville,” which was ironic, allusive, and dreadful.
“Graduate school, marriage, work, child, and parents’ deaths – it was decades before I got back to what had become the Thomas Wolfe Memorial. In fact, it was almost too late, after the devastating arson of 1998: I didn’t visit again until the fall of 2002, when a huge blue tarp still covered the partially collapsed roof, the north side of the rambling house was all plastic and tarpaper and 2 x 4 braces, and smoke damage haunted the windows. Four years into its restoration, the sun did not shine bright on “My Old Kentucky Home,” and it didn’t look like it ever would again.
“Memorial Day weekend, 2004. I stand where I rattled the chain-link construction fence only twenty months earlier, but can barely believe what rises before me: the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, gloriously intact, painstakingly and sympathetically resurrected. In fact, the old boardinghouse roof, the exterior yellow paint, the interior plaster, the furnishings – everything looks just like it did the year Tom left for college at Chapel Hill.
“But, appropriately for the nature of this particular place, it’s not overdone, a lifeless museum of early twentieth-century Americana. As I stroll through the house – around Julia’s kitchen, up the creaky central stairs, past the bed where W.O. unwillingly spent his last days – it’s easy to imagine that the family or boarders just stepped out and might be back shortly.
“Which is to say: The place feels exactly right. Like home, again.”

--- Michael McFee, quoted from Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook, by Georgann Eubanks (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.)

On a last note, there are other great commentaries on Thomas Wolfe to be found in the Fall 2007 issue of Appalachian Heritage, including another Old Kentucky Home discovery account by Kentucky native Gurney Norman.

Poem

Durazno Dulce


It's January,
and I'm eating a ripe peach.
The cool flesh quenches me
like a South Carolina breeze
off the distant mountain ridges.
I can almost taste the sweet clover
growing between the orchard rows
when I close my eyes and chew slowly.

It's funny,
that this fuzzy, half-eaten fruit
is from the country of Chile
and not from Greer, or Cooley Springs.
Though I've been down Highway 25,
long before it turned four-lane,
I can't quite picture the towering Andes
or feel the wind from their snow-capped peaks.

The New Year

My wife commented to me a few days ago how she didn’t see what the big deal was about celebrating the new year, except an excuse to close businesses early on December 31, (“so everyone can go out and get drunk and party”), then everything being closed on New Year’s Day (“so everyone can sleep in and recover from their hangover”). Though I at one time partook of New Year’s festivities and all its merry-making while in college, I now see it as on the same level of importance in my life as Groundhog Day. Still, my wife’s vexation of not being able to shop at Sam’s Club on New Year’s Eve got me considering its importance.

It’s a time I’ve always stopped and considered the future, of what may come for the following year. As a young man in high school and college, a year was a lifetime. It was full of possibilities and anticipated summer adventures, a year to meet new people. I anxiously awaited those adolescent milestones into adulthood: 13, high school graduation, 18, 21, college graduation. It was also a time for me to reflect back on previous years, to look back and see how far I had come. It was a time to recount the good times and bad times I had experienced. When I was younger, though, there was less to reflect back on.

Now the years I have been on this earth stack behind me like second-hand books, one on top of the other, and the ones on the bottom of the stack get harder and harder to pull out and read. I can look at my life in decades, layers of strata in ancient rock, buried under the fresh thin layer of silt that is 2008 (those of you over 40 are probably laughing at me right about now). In 1998 I graduated from Appalachian State, enrolled back into ASU in the graduate program because I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, met my future wife, and worked as an editorial assistant for Jerry Williamson at the Appalachian Journal. In 1988 I was in eighth grade living in Hillsville, Virginia, wearing blue jean jackets with the patches, arm wrestling in math class, and wondering how I was going to get the courage to ask Rhonda on a date (or maybe it was Chandra – I had a thing for girls from Sylvatus). In 1978 I lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, my favorite television show was Sesame Street, I couldn’t tie my shoes, and I often loved to dance and make funny faces in front of my 1-year-old sister to get her to laugh. So much has happened in between that I couldn’t possibly begin to recount.

Now at 33, married with two children (and basically settled), an upcoming year is like chump change, not even enough to buy a can of soda at a convenience store. The only mileposts in my life now are looking forward to watching my children grow, that and my retirement in 23 years. I know it seems like I’m wishing my life away, but I assure you I am content with the predictable, methodic pace my life is taking because I share it with people I love, my wife and kids. Predictable is good, and there is always the possibility for the unexpected adventure. I just have to be more patient.

Mountaineers Do It Again

How about them Mountaineers?

You can see more pics at Blue Ridge Blog.

http://blueridgeblog.blogs.com/blue_ridge_blog/2007/12/appalachian-sta.html

Poem

Cold

Starts with the wind,
distantly
howling and scraping
blindly
through skeleton trees,
rolling
down the mountain,
gaining momentum,
darkly
drawing the night closer,
slaps
against our clapboard house,
squeezing
creaks and moans,
twists
frame and rafters,
foundation footings.

A sudden silence,
quietly
slides like mercury
under doors,
window panes,
along hushed floors,
climbs
my footboard,
slips
under the corners,
quilted covers,
curling
around my toes,
settling
among bare-boned ankles,
siphons
what little warmth
can cling to me.

Poetry Still Inspires

Sometimes I have a good day of teaching. In one of my classes, I am currently teaching how to do a research paper. I usually choose modern American poets as the topic because it does not require a huge amount of reading to get into a writer's work, and there is such a huge list to choose from. In one of my general level classes, a student chose Nikki Giovanni as his poet. He had been having some trouble getting into researching her biography and finding a poem to critique, until he came across "All Eyez on U." "Hey Mr. Hampton!" he said to me. "Did you know that my poet wrote a poem about 2Pac?" "Oh, yeah." I acted like I forgot. "What does she say about him?" He then warmed up a little more to reading about her life, especially once he realized that she wasn't one of those "boring dead white guys." Today in class he very animatedly told me that he just found out she had a tatoo on her arm that said "Thug Life." He was pretty impressed by that. I can't take the credit for his inspiration into poetry, though. All I did was point him in the direction I thought he would like to go.

A good collection of Nikki Giovanni's poetry is entitled Love Poems, which includes the tribute poem to 2Pac Shakur.

I Love This Time of Year!

This photo was taken along the Boone Fork Trail near Blowing Rock, NC, which loops around Price Park just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The resolution would have been better if I had my digital camera with me. This is just a scan from 35mm film. I love the fall, the leaves changing, the weather getting colder, the smell of woodsmoke from someone's chimney on the air. Even the sound that falling leaves make as they scuttle across the driveway or tumble over one another is elating.

My First Published Magazine Article or Hillbilly Heritage Comes to Paris

And only one so far. I would like to say that it was my world-renowned knowledge of Appalachian Culture that got me the job. In reality, it was probably because my e-mail address had the word "hillbilly" in it that I was approached by a French magazine for English language learners to write an article. Today in English, a magazine out of Paris written for French-speaking people learning English, wanted me to write about "hillbillies" and the "mountains" of Appalachia. The editor, who was British, specified to focus on not just the place but the people as different from the rest of the U.S. He mentioned that everyone in his office thought of the Rockies when American mountains came to mind. I tried the best I could to explain it clearly to someone who had never visited the U.S. I also wanted as best as I could not to perpetuate the hillbilly stereotype, but to identify it as an economic and social class marker, a scapegoat for which most world cultures have an equivalent. The following article was published last November of 2006. The hardest part of writing this I remember was converting all measurments to the metric system. Them crazy Europeans and their precise measurements!

The Appalachians: My Hillbilly Home

When my grandfather was a young boy, he would sometimes follow the smell of an oak wood fire into the Buck Woods where the old-timers secretly made moonshine – corn whiskey, to be precise. They were mighty suspicious of visitors, but since my grandfather was too short to shoot, they let him watch. My grandfather also liked to eat the sour mash they fermented to make the alcohol and the men would sometimes give him a cup of this “shiner’s porridge”. Whether he got drunk from this or not, my grandmother wouldn’t say. It would seem too “hillbilly” to her, I suppose.
Hillbilly wasn’t a name to use in polite company, but it was there, the stereotype of the Appalachian Mountains: the lazy, bearded man in dirty clothes, sitting outside his log cabin with his dogs, no shoes, no teeth, a moonshine bottle in one hand and a shotgun leaning against the wall beside him. Or the woman: barefoot and pregnant, a child on one hip. That was the image that came to everyone’s mind when they heard I was from the mountains, because that is how the rest of the country saw us. I talked different, I acted different, and I ate different food. When I opened my mouth, people automatically wanted to deduct 100 IQ points.
As I grew older, though, I learned to be proud of who I was and where I was from, and learned to love that which made the Appalachian Mountains different from the rest of the United States.

Small is beautiful
They barely cast a shadow, as mountain ranges go. Only a few peaks reach over 1,800 meters. At a distance, their gentle and forested hills may seem mundane for travellers accustomed to the Rockies or Alps, but the Appalachians are a unique island of tradition surrounded by the ever-changing waters of pop culture and progress. From their deep cultural heritage to the rich colors of the autumn foliage, their history and scenery are worthy of discovery.
Stretching 2,570 kilometers from Newfoundland, Canada, to Alabama in the southeast, they are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, having eroded from Himalaya-like peaks to their present size. The first to discover and settle the area were the American Indians. Later, the Scotch-Irish settled in the coves - some say it was because the area reminded them of the highlands they left behind. Many were devout Presbyterians, but they also brought their love for fiddle music and making whiskey.

Families and Feuds
What makes people from Appalachia different than the rest of the country could best be summed up in three factors: family, land, and time. There are stronger ties to family and tradition here in the mountains. Vendettas have been declared over blood ties - the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud is an example. In my area, there was a feud between the Allen family and law-men that finished in a shootout at the court, today called the Carroll County Courthouse Tragedy. Families stick together around here, for good or bad.
People also feel a closer tie to the land in the mountains. There is a sense of belonging to the mountains, of them defining who we are. What part of the mountains someone is from can be just as important as the sports team for which one cheers - so West Virginians, for instance, are fiercely loyal to their state. They have to be because of all the jokes that get told about them.
Time is viewed a little differently here in the mountains, and there is a friendliness and hospitality that is found more in the Appalachians than elsewhere. Whenever I leave the mountains and visit places like New York City, for example, I realize how much I miss expressions such as “Thank you” or “Excuse me.”

Not one range, but many
The Appalachians are really not one but several mountain ranges, each with distinctive geographic and cultural differences. To the north there are ranges such as the Adirondacks of New York and the Poconos of Pennsylvania. These are wonderful places to visit, don’t get me wrong, but being from the South I am naturally inclined toward the Southern Appalachians such as the Blue Ridge Mountains, which run from Virginia through North Carolina. They get their name from how the dark green of the summer forests look blue in the distance, rather as the nearby Smokey Mountains get their name from the blue-gray haze that veils the summits. Autumn is one of the best times of year to visit them, as the leaves lose their green color, revealing deep reds, oranges and yellows.
When it comes to recreation, camping and hiking are popular activities. Practically every park or national forest has miles upon miles of well-maintained trails and campsites. One of the most famous is the Appalachian Trail - a 3,478 kilometer footpath crossing 14 states from Maine to Georgia. Whitewater rafting and kayaking are also favorite pastimes with many world-class rapids here. Believe it or not, winter offers opportunities for skiing as well – the season is much shorter than in northern Appalachia or the Rockies, but places such as Beech Mountain in North Carolina and Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia offer comparable conditions. “Spelunking,” or cave exploration is another popular recreational attraction. Kentucky is most famous for Mammoth Cave National Park, the longest recorded cave system in the world. More than 570 kilometers have been explored and mapped.

Bluegrass and Country
The Southern Appalachian region is also rich in the cultural legacy left by our Scotch-Irish ancestors. From the settlers’ love of music developed two styles that are distinctly American: Bluegrass and Country. Though not as internationally popular as Rock ’n Roll or Jazz, they all originated from the same old-time sound. From the beginning, the Scotch-Irish fiddle was accompanied by the banjo, an instrument used by African slaves. Guitars were added much later, as well as the mandolin. The music was used as a means of entertainment at dances, and of storytelling, passing folk tales down to younger generations. Only later did Bluegrass legend Bill Monroe give it a title, after the blue-hued grass of Kentucky.
Once called “Hillbilly music”, the name "Country" developed as record companies tried to meet an urban demand for a traditional sound of rural, “country” people. The birthplace of country music isn’t in Nashville, but in Bristol, Tennessee – the place where the famous Carter Family, whose tight harmonies defined the genre, first recorded their songs (recently made famous by the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Today, Country and Bluegrass music has experienced a renaissance, both mainstream and in smaller circles. Festivals such as Merlefest in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, celebrate country and bluegrass greats new and old every spring.

The Moonshine Boys
They were called the Robin Hoods of their time, roaring down the backwoods roads and over bridges, their big engines heralding their approach. With moonshine bottles rattling together in the back, they outraced the police with their hard-driving skills, delivering their cargo to the big-city bars and bringing the money home to support the family. Called "moonshine" because it was made by the light of the moon, this illegal whiskey-making was a profitable enterprise at a time when jobs were scarce. So, to avoid getting caught, young men would rebuild their car engines to enhance performance and outrun the police. Soon, they began to argue about who had the fastest car, deciding the contest with late-night races around a farmer's field. This is the unlikely origin of one the USA's largest spectator sports: Stock Car Racing. Better known today as NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing – memorize this and you win the admiration of thousands of fans!), it originated in the Appalachian region. The Dukes of Hazzard television show and movie attests to this legacy.

Don't Believe What You Hear
Over the years, the stereotypical hillbilly image has been romanticized in historic figures such as Davy Crockett, or seen as comic in television shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies, and even portrayed as evil and monstrous in movies such as Deliverance, where sadistic and depraved hillbillies harass, torture, and sexually molest a group of canoeists from the city. Don’t worry; the only things I’ve ever encountered canoeing and rafting around here are mosquito bites and a sunburn.
In reality, every society has its hillbilly. For the English, the lower class of ridicule was the Irish. For the French, it was the Belgians. For us hillbillies, it is the summer tourists from Florida who don’t know how to drive in the mountains, but that’s another story.
Many people laugh when we call the Appalachians “mountains,” and I can understand that, having myself traveled through the Rockies. But what the Appalachians lack in height, they make up for in depth -- of history, culture, and charm. To the rest of our country, they are like the wise and eccentric uncle of the family. Besides, to call them “hills” seems too condescending. Certainly, when I am on top of Mount Mitchell, with miles and miles of mountains rolling like waves around me, I can’t help but feel like I am standing on top of the world.

* * * *

[Insert shameless self-promotion here] By the way, I'm available for freelance writing if any editors are interested!

SAWC's Fall Gathering at the Highlander Center

This past weekend I fellowshipped with poets and writers of the Southern Appalachian Writers' Cooperative (SAWC for short) at the Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee. It was a fantastic time of socializing, reading work, and workshopping our writing, and, of course, swarping. We had about 12 or so people there, smaller than last year's group, but had some wonderful new members attend for the first time (I hope to see you guys, er, gals again Jenny, Jennifer, and Susan, at next year's gathering, or sooner). Unlike other poetry workshops I have been to, the small atmosphere and camaraderie to me tends to foster a trusting, relaxing, and fun. In my 12 years of writing I've discovered in me a regional, Appalachian voice that feels at home with this loosely knit group of writers and varlets. I've been going almost every year since 1999, and until the group is overrun by terrorists (or Republicans) they will always be considered my family of writers.


I also took a scenic drive to Tennessee via the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Smoky Mountains. I took some great pictures at Graveyard Fields in which the fall colors seemed to pop out of the landscape, seen here. These photos hardly represent how they actually looked, though. Even though it was cloudy, the oranges, reds, and yellows shined like sunlight.


Also, at Jennifer's request this weekend, I have posted below one of the poems I read this past Saturday, "Grandma's Kitchen." If you don't like the poem, you can blame her (ha ha).

Poem

Grandma’s Kitchen

My wife won’t stop
for mom and pop restaurants,
but rather enjoys the consistency,
the glossy, dim-lit sterility
of Outback and Applebee’s.

One cold Christmas day,
traveling back from my folks,
the only sit-down place open
for miles in any direction
was Grandma’s Kitchen.

A little barn-framed building,
next to a truck stop where
the pavement ended in ruts
and the air was chicken-fried.
I was ready to claim my stake.

“She’s not my Grandma,”
my wife said with upturned brow,
“probably some sweaty cook
dropping ashes in the French fries,
scratching himself with a spatula.”

I just looked solemnly out the window,
thought of corn bread and beans
and the coffee I was about to receive.
While she drove away in my truck, I thought,
she must not be that hungry.