Ray Whitaker :: Three Poems for October ::
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: After moving west, I find that I to this day, compare things out here in Big Sky country to standards set by having lived in North…
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
"Since 1996. No good Southern writing is complete without a dead mule. Everybody is south of somewhere, but there's nowhere quite like the Southern USA."
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: After moving west, I find that I to this day, compare things out here in Big Sky country to standards set by having lived in North…
Not sure what a Southern Legitimacy Statement is but – in fact I lived in Titusville, Florida and worked at Cape Canaveral between 1966-1969. I also returned after 10 yrs.…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am not Southern by birth, though the South has become an adopted home, having been a resident of Greensboro, NC for a few years now. I…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a sixth-generation North Carolinian. I was a high school English teacher in Burgaw, NC and years later an environmental writer/producer who depended on major environmental…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having grown up in a little mill town hanging balanced between old family farms and local factories, I feel eligible for membership in the Dead mule school,.…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have eaten liver mush, frog legs, and gator bites. Worn orange overalls and purchased with $2.00, tiger stamped bills at Clemson football games. I have walked…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: i have a snarly relationship with the south. i was born in richmond moved to south carolina back to richmond then north carolina back to richmond stint…
Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: Is geographic location enough in this instance…? I guess for me, it’s going to have to suffice. I’m from generations of hardcore New Yorkers. The…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and given away at birth; raised and educated; married and divorced; defiled and defined, and churched, in North Carolina. Southern writers such as Flanner…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Too often, our Native American past has been ignored or left out of Southern history. Here in Fayetteville, Arkansas we have a long connection to the Cherokee…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native to Virginia and long-resident in Georgia, I’m as Southern as Southern can be. (Let’s not talk about the seven-year stretch in New Jersey.) A prominent Mid-Western…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Central Heights in northwest Alabama, and I’ve lived in Tuscaloosa and Knoxville. I have never been outside of the south for more than…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Florida. And that certainly doesn’t count. Surrounded by rich Yankees for twenty-some-odd years, I had no idea what the South was about. But…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: After I listened to Sinatra singing “The Wee Small Hours of the Morning” earlier today and remembering how much I liked it as a kid, I thought…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in West Virginia but have called the Carolinas home for the last 16 years. Time I shot a doe as she stood by her…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: In the forgotten parts of Louisiana, where there are more trees than swamp, my great grandfather really did put snapping turtles in his cattle gaps— much to…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Huntington, WV and raised in a little, coal-dusted town along the Ohio River–hailed “the Southernmost Point of Ohio,” in fact–I never felt like an “Ohioan.”…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived all of my life south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I come from Bandy, which is located in southwest Virginia. I was six when my family…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri and now live (very, very) close to Atlanta. With the exception of college, I have spent my entire life in…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Vidalia, Georgia; I studied creative writing in Valdosta, Georgia, , and now I’m on the hunt for the most authentic southern…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I fear that my complete listing of southern legitimacy would crash the cosmos & petunias so I shall HENCEFORTHWITH condense – I was born a coal miner’s…