April Winters “Radio Waves”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Grammy used to make the best rhubarb pie. Her meals were the type where every inch of the long table was covered with food: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, and vegetables from her garden, and dessert of rhubarb pie. Yum! She expressed her love for her family by making sure we all had full – I’m talking really full – tummies. She had a quick wit and what she called a “hillbilly” accent. She may not have been ‘book’ smart, but she sure was love smart.
Ted Harrison “Brotherly Love”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When you are born of Scot-Irish and Welsh stock in Piedmont North Carolina you start with a perceived southern legitimacy, but perhaps when you grow older you want to prove it --
One of my grandfathers was a storekeeper and the other a farmer. The storekeeper died sometime before I started school. The grandfather who was a farmer gives me a sense of southern legitimacy—at least in my mind. He farmed with his son, my uncle Richard. Their homes were about a hundred yards apart, separated by a field that by turns yielded cotton, or corn or wheat.
In the mid-1950s, Uncle Richard decided it was time to install indoor plumbing in his home. Running water in the kitchen, a bathroom, the works. He approached my grandfather with the idea that while the work was being done Poppa’s pump could be electrified, pipes run into the house for the kitchen and a bathroom, too.
I don’t know how long the discussions took, but finally Poppa agreed. Agreed, to a point. When the work finished at my uncles home work began at Poppa’s. First the pump was electrified. No more pumping the handle up and down to fill a bucket to take into the house for use. Yes, when the modern work finished you could turn on a spigot, then fill your bucket of water courtesy an electric pump—then you could carry your bucket into the house for use.
Maybe not southern legitimacy for some, but it works* for me.
*Works for the Dead Mule, too.
Herbert Martin “Our Dearest Abandoned Sister” and 2 more poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Birmingham, Alabama and even though my family migrated in the forties looking for work, I remain a Southerner in manners and diplomacy. I am not sure but I think that this is a Southern Statement.
Niles Riddick “Dog War”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I've lived in the South my whole life. I haven't wanted to. I've wanted to live in more exotic places like Paris or London or even in the United States, places like San Francisco or New York. But I don't want to move. I just fantasize about it. I grew up in Georgia, lived in Tennessee for 15 years, and then moved back to Georgia.
Paul Smith: Bye & Bye
I hereby certify I am a Yankee. Put down your guns. Having visited your website, I've come to the conclusion that once you figure out i'm not related to William Faulkner, you may still read what I have wrote written. By way of introduction, this is a preamble, a necessary and unfortunate assembly of words before The 'Southern Legitimacy Statement,' which is forthcoming.
'Southern Legitimacy Statement' by Paul Smith
Part 1 of the First Part 'I deplore the degradation of Gatlinburg, Tennessee into the tourist nightmare it has become because I remember when it was young and somewhat pure, and although I don't remember the actual event itself, I may have been conceived there, since mom and dad liked it and came there a lot (please don't snicker at any unintended double-meanings.
Part 2 of the First Part ' I know why there are so many Ogles in Gatlinburg. They are not descendants of James Oglethorpe. They are descendants of King Og, who was some kind of King in England. I realize Wikipedia says something else, but this was told to me by one of the Ogles, possibly Kates, who let me ride his horse.
Part 3 of the First Fart - 'I have been to Dollyville in Pigeon Forge and have eaten pancakes in one of the 26 'All You Can Eat' pancake houses between Gatlinburg & Pigeon Forge.'
Valerie MacEwan: Matthew Rose and “The Letters”
Recasting the throw-aways and detritus, the overheard and misspelled, the artist has fashioned a large expository drama that serves as fragmented window into our collective Zeitgeist. Sex, love, death, politics, aesthetics and the muddled semiotics of our age all find a place in this body of work and beckon the viewer to read, decipher and unravel. The pieces in The Letters resonate with an enigmatic poetic presence. The result is a significant body of work by an important American artist...
Tim Bullard: Saving the Depot
Tim Bullard, 1999 ... reporting at its finest. We're sorry that we can no longer find the original photos accompanying the piece.
John Riley: How It Went Bad With Horsepen
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When my son was just a little guy, four or five, and studying the violin he loved to take a break from classical music and go with his pap-paw to an old barn down in Pittsboro that had been converted into a little music hall. When it was their turn the two of them would climb onto the stage and the women in the audience would say, “My, my” and “Look how cute he is.” My boy would be wearing his little white cowboy hat and jeans and boots and when his pap-paw gave him the signal he'd dip his head and start going to town on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” or “Old Joe Clark” or “The Orange Blossom Special,” maybe even a Bob Wills song or two, while the house band accompanied them on dobro and rhythm guitar and bango. My son's parents would be in the audience beaming like bug lights as their boy and his pap-paw fiddled away. I'm sure this happens in other parts of the country, but I'm not sure there is anyplace else where playing the old-time music weaves warmly through generation to generation the way it does here in North Carolina, where the music was born and the best little fiddlers in the world are bred.
Sylvia Dodgen: Encounter
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and bred in the Alabama Wiregrass, where fireflies light summer nights and whippoorwills cry, as souls depart. My daddy never set his hat on the bed, fearing bad luck and didn’t believe in starting any project on a Friday. He believed in planting by the moon and swore long-dead cows could be ghosts too. Unmarried I said I wanted a baby and thought of artificial insemination, he said, “The little bastard will just be welcome.” He was a wise man.
Erin Cochran: Ferris Wheel’s End
Southern Legitimacy Statement: It's been said that my daddy's family is so southern that no one in it from the time brothers Chance, Gardner, and Claude set foot in the Carolinas in 1642 had ever lived north of the Mason-Dixon line until my first cousin moved to Michigan in 1997. That was a travesty in our family worthy of comment from our Uncle Claude, the man who could engage in an hour long conversation without uttering more than five words. He was almost as concerned with her move as he was in finding mamaw's peach cobbler recipe after she passed away that should have been among the good nighties stored away unopened for that inevitable trip to the hospital. I guess that makes us southern but if not, there's an entire county in Alabama that our children have been warned about finding a mate in, as we are related to the entire county in some form. That's probably an exaggeration but there were 1600 people at the last family reunion we attended all descended from one couple and most people came from less than an hour away. The table of "greens" was actually nine tables long and I'm pretty sure my dad ate some from each and every pot.
A. J. Tierney: Stuck Like This Forever
Southern Legitimacy Statement: An “Okie from Muskogee” I am one of very few women who have been crowned both Miss Azalea Festival and Miss Indian Summer. I was convinced for years that Colonel Sanders was my grandfather since my grandmother worked so many hours at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I tagged along curling up under her desk with my Snoopy dog that she bought me with S&H Green Stamp books. I’m still stunned there are people in the world who don’t know about paper shell pecans. You haven’t truly lived until you you’ve watched your grandma fry potatoes, okra, pork chops, and chicken in a cast iron skillet in bacon fat that’s been out on the counter all day.
Art Heifetz: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Came to Richmond in 1977 as a damned Yankee, that is one who decided to stay. Gradually lost my New York accent and started saying “youse all.” Told my clients that my people were F.F.V. and they shook their heads earnestly. “Don’t believe I ever heard of Heifetz.” “Just kidding, ma’am,” I replied. “ We’re from North Carolina.”
Davis Slater: Helping Daddy Win
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised between the Mississippi and the Ozarks, where Missouri eats into Arkansas, you can walk to Tennessee, and you can wave at Kentucky, I'm now vegan, not for health or environmental reasons, but because I'm pretty sure I ran the entire South out of edible critters when I was a boy.
Poetry
Essays
