Blues and Roots/Rue and Bluets: A Garland for the Southern Appalachians
112
Blues and Roots/Rue and Bluets: A Garland for the Southern Appalachians
112eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822382959 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/29/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 984 KB |
About the Author
Jonathan Williams (1929–2008), photographer, poet, and publisher, was founder of the Jargon Society Press. His many works include An Ear in Bartram's Tree: Selected Poems, 1957–1967; Quote,Unquote; A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude; The Magpie’s Bagpipe: Selected Essays; and Jubilant Thicket: New and Selected Poems as well as the collection Portrait Photographs.
Read an Excerpt
Blues & Roots Rue & Bluets
A Garland for the Southern Appalachians
By Jonathan Williams
Duke University Press
Copyright © 1985 Jonathan WilliamsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-0615-3
CHAPTER 1
A Valediction For My Father, Ben Williams (1898–1974)
all the old things
are gone now
and the people are
different
Bea Hensley Hammers an Iron Chinquapin Leaf On His Anvil Near Spruce Pine &
Cogitates on the Nature of Two Beauty Spots
in the Linville Gorge I
know this place
now it's a rock wall
you look up
it's covered in punktatum all
the way to Heaven
that's a
sight
* * *
up on Smoky
you ease up at daybust
and see the first
light in the tops of the tulip trees
now boys that just naturally
grinds and polishes the soul
makes it
normal
again
I mean it's really
pretty!
The Hermit Cackleberry Brown, On Human Vanity:
caint call your name
but your face is easy
come sit
now some folks figure theyre
bettern
cowflop they
aint
not a bit
just good to hold the world together
like hooved up ground
thats what
Lee Ogle Ties a Broom & Ponders Cures for Arthuritis
lands them fingers really
dreadfulled me I
couldnt tie
nary broom one
had to soak em in water
hot as birds blood
then I heard this ol man from Kentucky say
take a jug of apple juice just juice not cider
pour the epsum salts to it and
take as much as you kin
bein fleshy I kin take
right smart but
boys you know it moves a mans bowels
somethin terrible
well boys it just
naturally killed that arthuritis
lost me some weight too
and I
still tie thesehyar brooms
pretty good
Old Man Sam Ward's History of the Gee-Haw Whimmy-Diddle
some folks say
the injuns made 'em
like lie-detectors
called 'em
hoo-doo sticks
feller
in Salisbury, Noth Caylini
made the first
whimmy-diddle I seen
I whittle seven
kind: thisuns king
size, thisuns jumbo, thisuns
extry large
here's a single, here's one
double, here's a triple and why right here
here's a forked 'un
been whittlin' whimmy-diddles come
ten year, I reckon you'd
care to see my other toys,
boys, I got some fine
flippers-dingers, fly-killers
and bull-roarers, I can
kill a big fly at 60 feet
watch here
Paint Sign on a Rough Rock, Yonside of Boone Side of Shady Valley
BEPREPA
REDTO
MEETGO D
Daddy Bostain, the Moses of the Wing Community Moonshiners, Laments from His
Deathbed the Spiritual Estate Of One of His Soul-Saving Neighbors:
God bless her pore
little ol
dried up
soul!
jest make
good kindlin wood
fer Hell ...
Laments from the Pigeon Roost News
once we all grew shellot
potato onions everybody
around here have run out of
seed E. E. Seaton
of Jonesboro
Tennessee done heard
about this
* * *
the Fourth-a-July
Holiday
passed off in this part
very quiet
* * *
that snake were such
peculiar looking
to me I'm afraid I
couldn't give it justice
trying to describing it but it
didn't act mean like
it tryed to be
pretty like
it did
Three Thefts from John Ehle's Prose
every night
the possums climb higher
in the persimmon trees
* * *
a red pumpkin
in a row of yellow pumpkins
in a field
* * *
better'n
a creek
fulla syrup
Three Graffiti in the Vicinity of The Mikado Baptist Church, Deep in
Nacoochee Valley
bulldogs
stamp out
dragon fire
* * *
PEACHES HEAR
* * *
pleeze
vot fer lindin
A Pileated Woodpecker's Response to Four Dogwood Berries
kuk
kuk kuk
kuk-kuk
kukkuk
A Blue Ridge Weather Prophet Makes Twelve Stitches in Time On the Twelfth
Day of Christmas
JANUARY
worst
winter
since
last!
FEBRUARY
if the catbirds chatter
winter's might nigh over
and spring is just around the corner but
we aint seen the corner yet
MARCH
sap-risin'
time
is lovin'
time,
o supine pine!
APRIL
this aint
Blackberry Winter
this is
Late Easter Squirt
MAY
good time
to plant corn
when the hickory buds
are as big
as a squirrel's foot
JUNE
when you tend
to your
own business
you got
a load,
come rain or come
shine
JULY
heavy
elder
bloom—
good
old time
sign
AUGUST
hit's frost
6 weeks from
when
the katydids
holler
SEPTEMBER
elder people said that gnat swarms
were a good sign of thunder storms
but since then,
only some light rain ...
OCTOBER
heavy black
on the front end
of the woolly worm
bad weather
in the first go round
of winter time
NOVEMBER
first snow
get out,
wade in it
a little bit
old people, now dead,
said
DECEMBER
if you would rather see mild weather
and see some sign that makes you sorter
think a little bit that it
is going to be a mild winter
it will make you at least for a little while feel
better about it—
before the real begins
While Down at the Formicary, Time Flies
inst
ant
The Yellow Peril at Moore's Grocery
COLD
BEER
TOGO
Three Sayings from Highlands, North Carolina:
but pretty though as
roses is
you can put up with
the thorns
Doris Talley, Housewife & Gardener
* * *
you live until you die—
if the limb don't fall
Butler Jenkins, Caretaker
* * *
your points is blue
and your timing's
a week off
Sam Creswell, Auto Mechanic
Granny Donaldson Scoffs at Skeptics & the Uninitiated As She Works Up a
Cow-Blanket (Of Homespun, Crocheting & Appliqué) Up a Branch near Brasstown, Georgia
Question: whut fer
thesehyar
animules
be,
Granny?
Answer: haintfer
to name! why Adam's
Off-Ox
in thishyar
Garden
haint got
no name
neither
yet
but the Lord's
liable to call
thishyar
tree
Arber
Vity
hit's got
thishyar
sarpint
in it
A Blazon, Built Of the Commonest of All Common Eurasian Weeds Of the Fields
and the Wayside
The Ancient of Days
would that I
had known Aunt Cumi
Woody
C-u-m-i, pronounced
Q-my
she lived in the Deyton Bend Section of Mitchell
County, North Carolina many years ago
there is one of Bayard Wootten's photographs of her
standing there with her store-bought
teeth, holding a coverlet
she sheared her sheep, spun
and dyed her yarn in vegetable dyes,
and wove the coverlet
in indigo, the brown from walnut roots,
red from madder, green from hickory ooze, first,
then into the indigo (the blue pot)
Cumi, from the Bible
(St. Mark 5:41)
Talitha Cumi:
"Damsel, I say unto thee, arise!"
she is gone, she
enjoyed her days
Miss Lucy Morgan Shows Me a Photograph Of Mrs. Mary Grindstaff Spinning Wool
on the High Wheel
Miss Lucy tells that one day
a visitor asked Mrs. Grindstaff
"What are you doing?"
she said "Spinning."
the tourist said
"Why doesn't it break?"
she said "Because I don't let it."
the charred heart does not break in Appalachia, they
have not let it ...
the loom hums
there
Aunt Dory Ellis, of Penland, Remembers When She Fell in Her Garden at the
Home Place And Broke Her Hip in 19 and 56
the sky was high,
white clouds passing
by, I lay
a hour in that petunia patch
hollered,
and knew I was out of whack
Mrs. Sadie Grindstaff, Weaver & Factotum, Explains the Work-Principle to the
Modern World
I figured
anything anybody
could do a lot of I
could do a little
of
mebby
Aunt Creasy, On Work:
shucks
I make the livin
uncle
just makes the livin
worthwhile
Uncle Iv Surveys His Domain from His Rocker Of a Sunday Afternoon as Aunt
Dory Starts To Chop the Kindling
Mister Williams
lets youn me move
tother side the house
the woman
choppin woods
mite nigh the awkerdist thing
I seen
The September Satisfaction of Uncle Iv Owens:
I got
a rat-proof
crib!
Three Bears of Different Sizes, Dreaming from Three Hollow Logs On Mt.
Kephart in the Great Smokies On a Warm Day in February
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The Colossal Maw from War-Woman Dell, Georgia
more mouth on
that woman
than ass
on a goose
Lipstick Sign under the Concrete Bridge over Middle Creek
ass is nice
The Nostrums of the Black Mountain Publican
best thing
for roomatiz,
Homer, is
a great big ol messa
Woolly-Booger
if God
made anything better
he kep it
for Hissef
but boys lemme
tell you:
DON'T EAT NO
HAIRPIE
ON FRIDAY!
John Chapman Pulls off the Highway towards Kentucky And Casts a Cold Eye on
the Most Astonishing Sign In Recent American Letters
O'NAN'S
AUTO
SERVICE
Stone Sign By the Temple Congregational Community Church's Resident
Theologaster On the Banks of the Tallulah River
U
NEED
JESUS
GOOD
BUDDY
Logger to Dozer
if you work
for me,
son,
you got to
shit
and go
get
it
Cracker-Barrel Revertes on the Tune "Pax Americana" "Us common people run
this country!" GEORGE WALLACE
feller over in
franklin
says hes got thishere book
says that fbi feller hoover
says that nigger preacher kings
nothin
but a tarnation communist
and i reckon you boys
heared on the tv this
waiter jenkins hes
some kind of unnatchrul sex prevert why
you know them seven chillun
must be lightbulbs
you just know it
just like you know ol castro
and them jew boys in new york
got us into veetnam
some things be's plain obvious
why the barber feller was sayin
just yesterday
he said put the bombs to em boys drop em
all over them russkis and
the dadblame chinamens too and
might as well drop em on ol dee gawl
too hes got the big mouth dont he
i mean put it to em all
i mean buddy we could stop all this foolishness up north
why some things be's plain obvious
people get
what they want
A Mnemonic Wallpaper Pattern for Southern Two-Seaters
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
A Ride in a Blue Chevy from Alum Cave Trail to Newfound Gap
goin' hikin'?
git in!
o the Smokies are ok but me
I go for Theosophy,
higher things, Hindu-type philosophy,
none of this licker and sex, I
like it
on what we call the astral plane,
I reckon I get more i-thridral
by the hour
buddy, you won't believe this but
how old you reckon the earth is?
the earth is
precisely 156 trillion years old—
I got this book from headquarters in
Wheaton, Illinois
says it is!
I'll tell you somethin' else:
there are exactly 144 kinds of people on this earth—
12 signs and the signs change
every two hours,
that's 144, I'm Scorpio,
with Mars over the water
here's somethin' else innerestin' :
back 18 million years
people was only one sex, one sex only ...
I'd like to explain that,
it's right here in this pamphlet,
50 cents ...
never married, lived with my mother in Ohio,
she died, I'm over in Oak Ridge
in a machine shop, say,
what kind of place
is Denver?
think I'll sell this car, go to Denver,
set up a Center ...
name's Davis,
what's yours?
Dear Reverend Carl C. Mclntire:
Just a note
to let you know
we are listening to you
on Station
K-I-K-E
in Richmond,
Virginia
There are four of us Fundamentalist Baptist ladies
who ride together at 7:30
to the shirt factory and the napalm plant
and we always listen to your
"20th CENTURY REFORMATION HOUR"
every day
after the early morning
"MO-TOWN-SOUND-SHOW" with
"Urethra & the Catheters"—
you both groove, baby,
I mean you let it all hang out
and no doubt!
So when you laid that wicked-world bit
on our heads Friday we felt we should be prepared
to meet God and goodness we sure would feel lost
without your spiritual uplift in our new pink
Dodge Polara ...
Yours agin sin and keep keepin' those darkies
from a destroying our freedom,
zang-a-dang!
Myrtle-Jean Pugh, Co-Captain
James River Industrial League of
White Women Bowlers,
Team #16
The Remains of a Sign, Mitchell County, North Carolina
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Who Is Little Enis?
Little Enis is
"one hunnert an' 8olbs of
dynamite
with a 9-inch
fuse"
his real name is
Carlos Toadvine
which his wife Irma Jean
pronounces Carlus
Carlos says
Toadaveenie is a eyetalyun name,
used to be lots of 'em
round these parts
Ed McClanahan is the World's Leading Little Enis Freak
and all this information comes to you from a weekend in Winston
with Big Ed telling the lore of Lexington, Kentucky,
which is where Enis has been hanging it out for years and years,
at Boots Bar and Giuseppe's Villa and, now, The Embers,
pickin' and singin' rockabilly style
Carlus ain't what he was
according to Irma Jean's accounts
(and even to his own) :
he was sittin' there one night in the kitchen at home
tellin' stories and talkin' trash about Irma Jean—
with her right there with her hair put up in them pink plastic curlers—
about how these days how he likes to pop it to her dog-style
just now and again and how she likes it pretty damn well
when they wander all over the house
and end up in the living room corner—
"I'm just afraid Carlus will run us out the door and down the street
opposite the automatic laundry ..."
The 9-inch fuse hung down Enis' left leg
is called, familiarly,
Ol' Blue
Ol' Blue used to be in the pink! —
way in ...
Blue has a head on him like a tom-cat
and ribs like a hongry hound
and he used to get so hard
a cat
couldn't
scratch it ...
but now that Enis has the cirrhosis
and takes all thesehere harmones
?l' Blue just don't
stand up
like a little man
and cut the mustard
anymore
but Enis will smile and say
let's all have a drink, maybe I can drown thatthere liver of ours,
it's no bigger'n a dime nohow anymore, it just floats in there ...
Hey, Blue, let's shake that thang!
Turn a-loose this oldie
by my boy Elvis—
a golden oldie!
let's go, Blue!
And off they go
into the Wild Blue
Yonder in the Blue
Grass ...
Carlos & Blue,
thinking of you ...
Hail & Farewell!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Blues & Roots Rue & Bluets by Jonathan Williams. Copyright © 1985 Jonathan Williams. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.