I was born and raised in a part of the country not thought of a typically southern. I was raised in Estill County, Kentucky, which lies beside the Kentucky River at the foothills of the magnificent Appalachian Mountains. I have always thought of Kentucky as a bastard child of the south. The south doesn’t claim Kentucky in proper society, but we who live there know we belong to the south just the same. Listen to our speech and after three words you know we are related closer to Tennessee and Georgia than we could ever be to our northern cousins. I grew up drinking sweet tea and eating cornbread. I say Mam and Sir. I know what kudzu is and I have tasted moonshine fresh from a still. Now it don’t matter much what you think, because I know I am Southern.

Summer 2010

This is the third and final book review by the Poetry Editor that the Mule will publish in 2010. She chose this book because Tim Peeler is a poet who’s been in the Mule for years. He’s a poet all of the Mule editors read and admire. We hope our readers will enjoy the review and consider buying Peeler’s latest book, Checking Out.

Long quotations appear with permission.

I have been humbled. Schooled so to speak. Returning to college has taught this old gal a new trick or two about being herself…which is of course in the broadest sense Southern, but in the more narrow about being a Short “A” Appalachian native. These last few weeks, I have been taught (from a very passionate West Virginia App Lit professor at New River Valley Community College in Dublin, Virginia) that us App’s have been rightly overlooked in the literary canon sense of the word and culture, and language…and well, come to think of it in just about everything!. But what’s a good Southern, Appalachian, Virginia gal to do? Weep Scarlet O’Hara style? Why no, darling, dry those tears! I’ll be damned, I’ve got Appalachian DNA and that means of all things, I’m stoic. Independent. Proud! My Southern roots have been aptly verified and verily ratified (right here on the Mule) to which I say red velvet cake, yes! Hot cornbread and cold milk, hell yes! To that let’s add a shout out to my new found and embraced Appalachian culture. So…If you’s up my holler which is a yonder piece up the way a ball-hootin’ ….you aught knowed it might be a cold ‘un so stop a spell and you’uns share a cathead and flannel cake with this ole hussy. You’ns here?

Come back You’ns swan?

Sothern Legitimacy Statement

There is now place that compares to the South. I’ve been around to quite a few place, with family and alone. I enjoy seeing different places, experiencing different customs, tasting different food, but crossing that invisible line back into the South is the greatest feeling.

On road trips, we’d pester my father to give us an idea how much longer we had to drive, how much further we had to go. He’d drive on, stoic, minding us as little as possible. He confided in me once while I was riding in the passenger seat that he’d be a lot more comfortable ‘once we got back across the line. Just look or the “Grits” sign. When we see grits advertised, then we’re back in the South.”

I still use that logic today. Sure, they sell grits all over the place, but when you pull into a restaurant and see that huge sign assuring you they sell grits, you know you’re in the South. Sausage and gravy, red eye gravy, and cheese to put in the grits are a given.

Southern Legitimacy Statement

I don’t have the first clue what it means to be a “legitimate southerner,” but I do have some historical cred. On my Daddy’s side, I come from a long line of rebels and malcontents that first settled in the south before the Revolutionary war. My great-great-great grandpa Joshua settled in Virginia, in what later became the State of Franklin, a proto-rebellion before the big show got started in Concord. The family lore says he knew Daniel Boone, but I swear to God, every southerner has relatives who once knew Daniel Boone. His kids moved Tennessee and then to Mississippi, where they settled just south of Oxford, before the Cherokee and Choctaw were all driven west. They stayed about a generation and then picked up and moved again, this time to Pope County, Arkansas. My great-great-great grandfather Hezekiah died of the measles in Little Rock, where he’d gone to serve as a cavalryman for the Confederacy. Ever since, his progeny have lived right there in Pope County, on the cusp of the Ozarks. I’ve moved on to the big city, Little Rock, where I teach and write and think.

I don’t know exactly what a “southerner” is by single sentence definition, but I know its meaning intuitively from my experience, and I know it when I see it… (read the rest of this SLS)

April 2010

We did not expect to publish another review in the Mule so soon nor to realize this will be the second of a trilogy of reviews of poetry books we will publish this year. But even before I read Paper House, I knew I would write one for this book. Jessie Carty is a poet of considerable promise—a brave poet who does not shy away from herself and the stories only she can tell. Her book of poems is among my favorites. Jessie has also written an essay that appears below this review. Read and enjoy. The third review will most likely be published in July.

Long quotations appear with permission.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

When I started my first full time, career driven job, I was surprised at how many people I worked with that would make fun of people who lived in trailers and mobile homes. I wondered how can you call yourself Southern if you haven’t lived in a trailer or at least known someone who lived in one?