Stan Absher: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in North Carolina and, except for two years in France and a few years in Utah, I’ve lived in Virginia or North Carolina my whole life. I don’t much like grits, unless they’re baked and served with shrimp. My immediate family briefly owned a mule, primarily (I think) so my father could brag about it, but my uncle stubbornly continued to use one to cultivate his garden when everyone else had moved on to gas-powered tillers.
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Alina Coryell: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I came to Alabama from communist Romania with a banjo on my knee at the stunning age of three. While my friends were learning how to slobber out the correct “cain’t”, I wore red jeans to Catholic school and learned from the nuns that communism was thick as blood and showed up in pants. I wrote speeches for my next door neighbor to deliver to the local chapter of the D.A.R.— long, windbagged proclamations of hot and heavy patriotic ardor, stories of generals and saints who hated all the right people for all the godly reasons.
These days, I practice the fine southern art of sauntering around aimlessly with my three unschooled children hoping to attract the eye of that handsome city slicker I married. As a stay-at-home feminist, I refuse to keep more than one room of the house tidy at a time and maintain a strict “no cleaning on weekdays” policy. This explains why the family often camps out in the backyard at night.
Being a dilettante does not receive the respect it deserves in my hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. That’s why I plans to join the Green Party this year.
When I’m not admiring the sublime curvature of my rather buxom nose, I like to force my children to dress as early American settlers and scream “slow down” at old men in cars inching through the neighborhood.
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Norbert Krapf: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born and grew up on an island of German Catholics in southern Indiana surrounded by folks from Appalachia. Driving to the east and crossing the Ohio River, we came into Louisville, where I still have many maternal cousins. Going on forty-three years ago, I married a Cajun from Lafayette, Louisiana, whose mother’s maiden name was LeBlanc, from the LeBlanc Settlement. During the thirty-four years we lived on Long Island, on the cusp of New York City, where we raised our adopted daughter and son from Bogotá, Colombia, we had crawfish (never “crayfish”) flown in annually on dry ice from Cajunland. Indiana was a second and Louisiana a third home to our children. When my wife and I retired from teaching and moved back to Indiana in 2004, I started collaborating with jazz and blues musicians. I have been to see Minnesota minstrel Bob Dylan perform more times than I will here admit. I fell deep in love with the blues in the late 60s and have been a devotee ever since, culminating in several trips to Memphis and the Mississippi Blues Trail. It’s all been one great gumbo.
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Anne Robertson: Four poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I grew up in North Carolina under the shade of the hugest magnolia tree you've ever seen. I spent 18 years of my life smelling like magnolia, speaking with an accent I never knew or admitted I had, walking by confederate flag t-shirts in the halls of school, and trying to figure out the difference between the people who lived in the big houses on Riverside and those who lived out in the boonies in Chesterfield. The difference is who sold the most chicken versus who has the most heart. I ran away to New York as soon as I'd learned what my high school could teach me, which was how to stay human amongst the sound of ghost cannons and the swish of the debutantes' crinoline laughter. It's hard to go home now, because I've learned what it's like in places where people don't ask "how's ya mama'n'em?" or warn of rainstorms by tellin' you "it's fi'in' to come a cropper," and this has let me settle with the absolutely heart-breaking beauty of living in the Blue Ridge Mountains and I want to keep my memories of sitting above Linville Falls just as they are—a matter of nostalgic poetry. I've been told my poems sound like bedtime stories when I read them out loud. That's because they are. They are all the truth my mother and hers passed down in whispers and shouts to the girl whose middle name always gives her away as a Southern woman.
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Peg Bresnahan: Four poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Born and raised on the shores of Lake Michigan, my poetry was heavy with water. I’ve lived in Western North Carolina for ten years and now write about copperheads, turkey vultures, waterfalls, (all water being vertical save for the man-made lakes I don’t count), lichen and moss, balds, cougars, smilax, chiggers, laurel and rhododendron. I’ve learned that ‘bless her heart’ is the kiss of death, that almost everyone has an arsenal either in their car or house, and despite the fact drinking liquor is frowned upon, many people drink it. I have made the greatest friends, have wonderful neighbors, and wouldn’t move away from the Blue Ridge Mountains for anything. When I first arrived, I saved the messages on my answering machine just so I could hear the accent. Of course, being from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, I don’t have one.
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Gabriel Sealey-Morris: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My father threw up at the end of a tobacco row at 7 years old. I taught my Jerseyite wife to eat collards. By God, that in itself is enough.
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Harold Whit Williams: Four poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born and raised in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Several generations of my family have lived and worked the land in rural Winston County, Alabama - such an ornery and contrary and rebellious place that they seceded from the just-formed Confederacy, becoming the Free State of Winston. Both my parents and my sister have tremendous musical talent, and whatever musical amoeba that flourishes in the Tennessee River got inside my bloodstream as well. I soon found myself copying Hubert Sumlin and Steve Cropper guitar licks, playing in local garage bands, and even doing a session at the R & B mecca, Fame Recording Studio. After college, I moved to Austin, Texas to end up as guitarist for the critically acclaimed rock band, Cotton Mather.
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Carrie Teresa Maison: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have been in DC almost fifteen years now , but I am still a country girl at heart. I grew up on the border of North Carolina, and I am here to tell you that the sky really is bluer there than anywhere else. I have had the pleasure of working with the folks at The Dead Mule before and I am happy to say I have returned! I still miss mornings waking up to eat breakfast with Granddaddy in front of the wood stove. Mama's sweet tea is still served in a Mason jar and I still eat those peanut butter crackers all day long. These are my stories, mainly told over Kentucky bourbon and buttered biscuits.
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Joan Mazza: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
After living 32 years in South Florida, I ran from hurricanes to live in the woods of central Virginia. No traffic, no noise, close to nature, where I can hear myself think. I’m noisy on the inside.
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Linda J. Himot: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Starting out in New York I gradually migrated south—Charlottesville, VA, Highland County, VA and now Tallahassee, FL where flowers bloom year round.
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Ann Chandonnet: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
After spending 34 years living and writing in Alaska, poet, food historian and nonfiction writer Ann Chandonnet is spending her "Golden Years" in Vale, North Carolina, where she gardens and listens to owls.
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Susan Carter Morgan: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I moved almost every year of my life until finally settling in Virginia 35 years ago. Every time I drive through the Blue Ridge mountains, my breathing changes. I know it's spring when my fringe and dogwoods start blooming. I love calling my historic town home.
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Heath Jones Carpenter: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have spent the majority of my life in small-town Arkansas, with small stints in Europe and Florida. In that time I have experienced the glorious and the grit that encompass Southern living: Mint juleps and front porch sitting mixed with dirt roads and mosquito swatting. In the end, I am more Southern Gothic than Southern Gentry; give me Oxford American over Garden and Gun—O'Connor, Faulkner, and Percy are my champions.
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Rita Quillen: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My husband and I, whose families have lived in Scott County, Virginia for generations, raise Angus cattle on a southwest Virginia farm just over the mountain from the little community of Hilton, Virginia, where I grew up. I play oldtime music with the Rockhouse Stringband, following a long family tradition. My husband has not followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, who was at one time a moonshiner.
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Kathy Ferrell: Two Poems and a Haiku
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
A native and mostly life-long resident of West Virginia, I am descended from several generations of Irish stone masons and English sea-farers. When I discovered that my great grandfather arrived here from Limerick, I immediately understood why I so often think in rhyming verse, and why my father was more comfortable telling stories from his head than from a book.
Possessed of such a strong Appalachian accent that fellow West Virginians dismiss me as a congenital idiot, I’ve learned to use it for my own entertainment. I am adept at forelock tugging and “shining on”. My dream is to see drastic change in what passes for “Patrons of the Arts” in West Virginia, in that I would like to see fewer hors-d’oeuvres and more books and actual paintings in their homes.
I throw rocks with remarkable accuracy for an old woman, and once came jailhouse close to bludgeoning some fool to death with my cast-iron skillet. While he slept off my fried potatoes.
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Poetry
Essays
