Sylvie Galloway – Two Acrostic Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am certainly what you would call a southern woman. I grew up in East Tennessee, married then moved to the Western North Carolina mountains then moved even further south to the upstate of South Carolina. Now divorced, I attend a small southern woman’s college while wading hip deep through the world of perm rods, hair spray and tease combs. Hairdressing keeps the mortgage payments current, and my asthma doctor's budget in the black.
I live in a world where ya'll is a token word in most conversations, ice tea is strong and harmful to one's pancreas and grits is considered one of the four essential food groups. I also live in a world, that although I've been called a southern gal all my life, I don't always feel like I fit in. Maybe that's from being nerdy, somewhat bookish, and exhibiting no real talent or interest for sports of any kind, fishing, hunting, beauty contesting, baton twirling, clogging, shagging, or the baking or the frying of southern culinary delights. I also couldn't tell you who is in the running for this year's NASCAR driver of the year award if my life depended on it.
But where else but here in the south can you get peaches and strawberries picked fresh that morning? Where else does the hint of snow send two thirds of the county scrambling to the grocery for a week of supplies? Where else can one spend the summer partaking in the battle of trying to get something to grow in your backyard besides fire ant colonies?
What I am is woman who lives in a place I can't imagine ever leaving. I raised my kids here, my grand-kids were born here. My four cats were deposited upon my doorstep here. I'm a southern woman, and quite content with the label. Now can someone pass me a glass of that iced tea? I'm rather parched.
Richard Shiers Jr. – “Violet” – A Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Someone in my family says 'yonder.' Need I say more?
William Cullen Jr.: “A Long Good bye”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in Petersburg, VA during the Korean War and lived there for the first few years of my life. Later on during the mid-seventies, I lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I was stationed for a while in the army at Fort Benning, GA. My wife was born and raised in Savannah. My parents and several of my siblings live in Florida and Virginia. My best memory of the South was a week-long camping trip I made to the Smoky Mountains in the seventies.
Helen Peterson – “Agape” – A Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
As I've said in the past, my Southern Legacy stems from my father's side, born in Florala, Alabama.
Timothy Gager – A Poetic Series
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I've lived in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware where people wish to be much more southern than they actually are.
Will H. Blackwell, Jr. – Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Native of Mississippi (the first 21 years), I eventually wound up teaching in Ohio—but it was, after all, in the southern part of the state (Miami University). After retiring from Miami of Ohio, I returned to Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama—where I had, many years before, obtained one of my degrees. And, yes, I enjoy southeastern football as much as the next person (Roll Tide!). I continue to live in Tuscaloosa, where I maintain an adjunct position at UA (in Biological Sciences), and try to stay active in research. Both my research and writings usually find an outdoor emphasis (I had almost always rather be outside than in). I am interested in surreal aspects of nature, as well as its wonderfully abundant, real aspects. The human condition (and what may befall any of us as human beings) also gets my attention. In writing poetry, I have found a narrative, free-verse approach the most effective means to communicate my particular experiences. It has seemed to me, more often than not, that the southern stories in my life are the ones that come to mind to tell.
Brooke Salisbury – Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
So I’m not sure if being from Kentucky counts as the South, since it borders on the Mason Dixon line and all, but I have always felt southern and associated myself with ‘southernness’. And now that I live in the Northwest and no one seems to know where Kentucky is and thinks that I’m “from the Midwest” I become infuriated and can only now constantly think of moving to North Carolina and romanticize even the southern bits that I used to not like so much. But alas…I do love grits. And Hoppin John. And biscuits and gravy. And I know what a Paw paw tree is. Does a lover of southern food count as being legitimately southern. I hope so.
David Matthews – Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I never thought of myself as Southern, not even as a boy growing up in the house where my mother and uncles grew up on what was in their youth a small, not very successful farm in Irmo, South Carolina. Well, not in Irmo. Out toward Lake Murray back before the countryside was engulfed by suburbs. My grandfather, Mr. Dave Haltiwanger, was a schoolteacher who took over the family farm when his father died because it was his responsibility to do so. My grandmother, Mrs. Sue, some ten years younger, had been his pupil. They married soon after she graduated high school. My uncle once told me that my grandfather was not much of a farmer, woefully ill-suited to the lot that fell his way. My grandmother could saw a board or hammer a nail straighter than he ever could. I was named after my grandfather and people often remarked on my resemblance to him. Like my namesake I am not a man of practical bent and skills. While I no more think myself Southern now than I did then, I figure I shelled enough butterbeans, husked enough corn, and stepped in enough cow manure as a kid to stake some claim to Southern legitimacy if it comes to that. Even today, so many years passed and so much gone, I still think of it as home and get a little weepy when I see Granny bent over in the garden, her flowerbeds, the hog pasture, the bottoms, the pine trees my brother put out for a 4-H project, the little elementary school where four of my teachers had taught my mother, the little Lutheran church on the hill where those who mean so much to me now lie.
Timothy Dyson – Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Born and raised in Portsmouth, Va. Father from Arkansas and I went to college briefly in North Carolina. Although it's been a long time since I lived below the Mason Dixon, I always think of Virginia as home.
Staci R. Schoenfeld – Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
By virtue of both my biological (Kentucky) and adoptive (Georgia, Florida) roots, I am a southerner. Born in Georgia, I didn't really live in the south until I moved to Kentucky. (Miami, Florida, is definitely not the South, though it is quite far south when looking at a map.) I spent quite a lot of time riding around in cars as a child and teen listening to my Aunt complain about "that damn kudzu" and that invasive plant has even found its way into a poem or two.
David S. Pointer – Two Haiku and Another Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have lived in Tennessee since 1995. My father was a piano playing bank robber. He died when I was 3 years old. When I was 11 years old, I went to live in Camelot. Of course, that was Camelot federal housing authority in Clinton, Missouri. When I was an adult I went to the National Archives in Kansas City, Missouri and discovered that my maternal grandmother Binkley's grandmother Wilson had been a plantation owner in Kentucky. Mrs. Wilson lived to be 104 years old and died in Bates County, Missouri.
peter sragher – Two Yellow Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
southing. my left hand was born in the grand canyon, streaming along its huge red walls. so my hair turned stonered, meandering from the sculpted river stone to the rocks, carved by the winds into mountains. and my left hand still lives there, spanning over the canyon like the morning dew that never sets on the dry lands. my right hand was born in the gulf, near galveston and crabs, shimmering in the sunset and sometimes rages with a tornado, spinning like crazy, and throwing things into the air, and making them circle and fly to the skies, as if my right hand is high only to be high, up there, sucking air into hand and skin, pointing the finger to the blurred hurricane sky and showing the way. is there a way, during a storm, or are there ways, engendered by the whiff of the dark wind? if my american right hand shows it, there must be a way. i'm there, southbound, southwound, southing, soooooooooooouthiiiiiiiiiing, a south feeling, with my eyes burning in the sun on a hot summer afternoon, when the sun has fallen on earth, scorching the stone to lave and shoving it into the earth, deeeeeep, deeeeeeeeeeep into the earth.i'm everywhere, i'm here, i'm there, with my body reeling in the salty foamwavewaters beating the sands to life, yes, i'm there, do you see me?
Dan Smith – Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have been as far south as Red Oak, MO. ( okay, that's pretty much west )where I pissed off my wife and her friends by wanting to watch Leon Redbone ( hey, Red Oak/Redbone ) on TV instead of listening to them. We drove there in an old green Dodge Dart. We were stopped on the side of the road and we had to pick a big tick off my daughter's leg. The radiator overheated and they just replaced the radiator cap for like five bucks at a Shell station just off the interstate. Otherwise I went to Hamilton, OH. once in college to see Bo Diddley at Spaatz's Show Bar. He was from the South. Also went to Cincinnati, OH.to see Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto. She was from pretty far south and he was just from pretty far. Gary Burton was on vibes. He was 19 yrs. old. I am pretty far south of that.
I had a friend in high school who was from what was called the Southside of Cleveland, OH. I have lived through two economic periods that swept me pretty far south ( of course, this one isn't over yet ). A marriage went south ( see Leon Redbone incident above ). I've read a lot of James Lee Burke who wasn't born in the South but who, I think we can agree, writes about it better than most.
em a olsén – Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am a native-born Texan, and I now live in Mobile, Alabama. Need I say more?
Oh, all right: I love fried pies, preferably peach. I never sweat, no matter how hellaciously hot and humid the weather—though I will admit to an occasional glow.
Special Southern Legitimacy Note:
Mobile counts down the seconds to the arrival of the New Year with the dropping of a giant moonpie from the tallest building in town.
Hal J. Daniel III – Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Why did he end up in Eastern North Kackalacky? Well, if you take the 600 mile wide state of North Carolina and fold it back to the west over the 600 mile wide state of Tennessee, the tobacco fields of Eastern North would fold exactly on the cotton fields of Western Tennessee, with the mountains in the middle. Interestingly, the great state of Franklin once extended West from the Carolina outer banks to the banks of the Mississippi River.
Poetry
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