Clint Brewer – Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have lived in Tennessee my entire life—born in Memphis, raised up and educated in and around Knoxville and worked most of my adult life in the Nashville area.
There were many stops at small towns on the way, which taught me more about life than my time spent in the halls of academia or power.
There are some basic things I understand being a Southerner. It is possible to say a great deal while actually speaking very little. A man’s clothes and car do not really tell you how much money he has in the bank. Simple things are the best—fresh eggs, having the time to paint your own porch, your children playing barefoot in the yard, an extra sunny day in late fall and plain whiskey over cold ice.
Being Southern is something you feel in your bones. You are tied to the land, your spirit grafted to the communities of mamas, daddies, granddaddies, grandmas, aunts, uncles, cousins, preachers, teachers friends and enemies that help raise and shape you. When I cross the Cumberland Plateau on Interstate 40 headed to East Tennessee, I feel the pull of all those places that gave birth to me deep down inside.
I am not afraid to say, as a Southerner, that I get angry – viscerally so in some cases—when the South is the butt of the joke. Basically, folks, we don’t give a damn how you did it up North.
