Southern Sentence Poem Revisited
Last week when I reminisced about my Granddaddy, Pee Wee Griffin, Seaboard Airline Engineer for some fifty years, among the many comments I received was Kathryn Stripling Byer’s: The song of a train passing has haunted many a Southern poet’s work. Haunted, that is indeed what we are.
Yesterday I caught a snippet on public radio by a Civil War historian at Duke. He describes Governor Graham dragging his heels about secession; as much as a third of North Carolinians opposed war. The Duke Prof then tells about pulling into a barbecue restaurant in Kinston recently. During the War, General Pickett encamped at Kinston on his return from a disastrous attempt to recapture New Bern from the Union. In Kinston Pickett hanged twenty-two North Carolinians he considered deserters, though most of them had never sworn the oath to the Confederate Army. Pickett was later accused of war crimes and fled to Canada – the historical point being that allegiances, honor, and motivations are a lot more complicated than South vs. North. When the Professer parks at the restaurant and looks down the row of cars and pickups with Stars and Bars on their bumpers, he just shakes his head and says, “You don’t even know who you are.”
. . . . .
Who are we, anyway? That’s why there’s poetry – that we may discover who we are. I’m pondering again the form an essentially Southern poem might take. Remember in August I suggested such a poem must include Place, Past, and Culture. Our identity is complex, but a poem’s complexity lies in its brevity. What sense most perfectly evokes a memory? The sense of smell – impossible to describe, complex and heavy with nuance, a simple odor may transport you to a time and place you thought you’d departed forever. I want a poem to do the same, to be vastly more than the sum of its words, to cause the reader to gasp and sigh at the same time.
Therefore, the SOUTHERN SENTENCE POEM MUST BE SEVEN LINES.
Why seven? When I as a doddering old man kiss my great-grandchild, I will have held or been held by seven generations of my family. There are seven Southern waters: spring from rock fissure, clear trout stream, green piedmont river, dam & lake, blackwater meandering, sound, shore. Southerners more than many are subject to the seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues. Don’t forget the seven bridges road in Montgomery, Alabama. But most of all because I think seven lines is just the right length.
. . . . .
So here’s another attempt:
When the train whistle blows
through the Yadkin Valley
we lay down our plastic toys,
lean across the porch rail
until the last beckoning
has trailed away, and I become
my grandson, wondering.
. . . . .
Place – Yadkin Valley; Past – becoming my Grandson; Culture – porch rail and, of course, that lonesome, haunting train whistle.
Leave me your Southern Sentence Poems here or on our new Facebook Page.
. . . . .
.
V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 
Truth, Honor, Faithfulness, Steadfast, Standfast, Tar Heel Stick-to-it-tiveness.
I watch him press on, keep calm and carry on, like his ancestors down on one knee, a knight with no regard from his fair dame.
Until she leaves him, generally in soul, or sometimes in death, he waits.
But when she is gone, like King David, he rises from his grief and moves on.
The southern man is hard to understand because depending on who you ask, he is either a rock or a rascal for the making up his mind.
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I struggle with writing about the south living in Florida although I have experienced many things southern since I have now lived here for 27 years and gotten to know the “real” Florida. I am a midwesterner at heart but there are some things southern about the midwest which will come to me as I study this out. In the meantime if you will accept Texas as being southern, I will share a poem based on my mom:
My parents moved to the south just before the war
Landlords slammed the door in their faces
Calling them “damn Yankees” for being from Missouri
My mother embraced the south even so
And she learned to enjoy coca cola with her neighbors
As she hung out her laundry one day she heard the news about Pearl Harbor
Everything changed in an instant and the South became home
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In 2010, I completed the fifteen-year-long renovation of my great grandfather’s farm house where I now live with my two children. My father, sadly, did not live to see it completed, but I’ll never forget my first glimpse of the house, as recounted here:
Edward Robert Johnson, 1838-1905
We tramp around the house one sweltering July,
my father puffed with pride for his grandfather,
a Confederate veteran, wounded in action, left for dead.
Red-faced, voice tight, he corrects me:
He was not on the wrong side.
Until then, he had not realized
that he had raised a Yankee child.
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In 2010, I completed the fifteen-year-long renovation of my great grandfather’s farmhouse in Johnston County, NC. Although my father sadly did not live to see it completed, I will never forget my first glimpse of the house, recounted here:
Edward Robert Johnson, 1838-1905
We tramp around the house one sweltering July,
my father puffed with pride for his grandfather,
a Confederate veteran, wounded in action, left for dead.
Red-faced, voice tight, he corrects me:
He was not on the wrong side.
Until then, he had not realized
that he had raised a Yankee child.
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Bill, here’s an impromptu poem in the spirit (I hope) of the Southern Sentence poem:
In the back lot where we penned the hounds,
the tall weeds were lambsquarter, Daddy
said, and I laid into them left and right
snicker-snack with a long stick, but now
when I see them by dumpsters or behind
the depot, I’m never carrying
a stick and I suppose I’ve made peace
with whatever needed striking down.
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Love this JS!
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Oops–I see it’s actually eight lines long. That’s what I get for trying to use arithmetic when I’m tired. I’ll try to pare it down later.
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Nancy, Beth, JS — you’re all onto something here!
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Part of the wooden river-dam is gone
from the cane all the way back to the sand dredger;
some rusted architecture of time in this farmland,
that through the spill narrowing this “first” one
from its loss through the hourglass’s opening,
tells of this place-not a process, not a real name,
only the buckets once pulled from the river’s bottom.
Alexander County, NC is a mesh of small twisting rivers cascading down from the Brushy Mountains finally slowed, then stopped by many farm dams. This one on the Upper Middle River, simply called “First Dam”, backs water up about 100 yards. On its western bank are piles of sand.
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Here’s another try:
Magnificent man-tall thistle
bristling cap-a-pie with dew, dark green dock
with sticky burrs, carrot-top ragweed,
woolly mullein for lining shoes—the old men
fed me the names and uses and are survived
by yellow obits, flannels out at elbows,
the high-shouldered fields they cleared and abandoned
and welts plowed deep that are almost healed.
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[…] you read this post, move on to my revised definition of the SOUTHERN SENTENCE POEM at https://griffinpoetry.com/2012/11/25/when-the-train-whistle-blows/ And send me your offerings at our Facebook page: […]
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Excellent idea. I go for the seven lines, as long as you grandfather in my four-line sentence poem from August! (Grandfathering is an old Southern tradition.)
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Mr. Griffin, Mrs. Baddour was my teacher for English 125 at Wayne Community College and she suggested we try your Southern Sentence Poem. Here is my first attempt:
Fall to Grace by PunkPoet
Brief marital bliss follows Smoky Mountain nuptials
bed and breakfast sweetness in Beaufort, capturing kudzu in Charleston
Life in Columbia dissolves into discord
try to rebuild harmony in Louisa, Virginia, totally unsettled
flee domestic violence after thirteen years of marriage
Find peace in Eastern Carolina Air Force town, jet trail vapors
gracefully dapple the sky, rural community offers gentle hospitality.
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Holy cow, an entire life in seven lines . . .
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The int’resting poem you sent in’s
(Though I’d never require repentance)
Without punctuation
A run-on creation,
Not reallya stand-alone sentence.
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You’re right, I did envision it being the “Southern Sentence” as a being “sentence” — I’d welcome other suggestions and comments as we progress from embryo to infancy to robust toddler of a poetic form.
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Bill,
is
a
seven
line
sentence
feasible?
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As soon as Florence boys could drive, they’d take dates out to Wilson Dam—the single biggest lift lock dam in the world, folks claimed—so they could scare girls with tales of the giant catfish at the bottom of the lake—big enough to swallow a man whole if they wanted to—and then impress them by spitting at the bargemen locking through—slow, ropy twists of spittle.
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Alvis planted his garden right on the Eno where every creature
in the woods would cross through on its way to drink, then
insisted on shooting foxes who happened into his garden,
although, as I suggested to him numerous times, the foxes
came to eat the rabbits who did the real damage to his garden,
driving the point home, “Foxes are your friend, you damned fool!”
but he twisted his stubborn mouth and said, “I’ll shoot the rabbits too!”
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Alvis plants his garden right on the Eno where every animal
in the forest has to pass through it to water, then shoots foxes—
singles them out—who come to eat the rabbits that are doing
the real damage, a fact I’ve shared with him numerous times,
even adding, “The foxes are your friend, you damned fool!”
but he just twists up his stubborn mouth and says,
“I’ll shoot the rabbits too!”
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Howard liked hugging the curves past Spruce Pine Lodge
his body swaying, his old Dodge truck like a gently rocking
cradle, headed downhill and over the bridge at Lake Michie,
always surprised to see herds of deer foraging in the vast fields
of grass now growing on the bottom of the lake where
drought had reduced North Durham’s reservoir to a mirage
puddle in the distance.
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Jane — thanks for the poems! Just like being there. BG
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The following poem was submitted by Mary Susan Heath (PunkPoet is submitting online on behalf of the ladies of the Goldsboro Writers Group)
An Innocent In the Land of Tans
By Mary Susan Heath
In the land of tans,
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,
she was as white
as the underbelly of a fish
among the leather looks,
seasoned and wrinkled by the sun,
and the sins of a fleeting season.
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I am loving these poems — some seething Southern essence seeping in here! B
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The following poem was written by Marian Westbrook (submitted by PunkPoet on her behalf)
Figs
As green July flies dive and zing
I break the milky stems
of perfect purple globes,
rejecting overripe, split
fruit, whose pink and white
striated flesh, forlorn,
draws insects on the ground.
Marian Westbrook
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The following poem is by Rosalyn F. Lomax (submitted by PunkPoet on Ms. Rosalyn’s behalf)
Seven-Line Southern Poem
The sound of “Bless your heart!”
confounds our Yankee transplants
who never knew sweetness
till they discovered Dixie,
a whiff of magnolia, a sip of iced tea,
and a sweet surprise:
the South did rise again.
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The following poem is by Kitti Michalowicz (submitted by Punk Poet on her behalf)
What I Found In Dixie
Sultry days and starry nights,
Flowers soft and colors bright;
Stretched out words, languid phrases,
Melodic speech the ear amazes;
Kin is known; past is near;
Genteel manners, warmth to share
Hide backbones of tempered steel.
Kitti Michalowicz
Feb 2013
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Seven line Southern sentence poem by Nancy Seate submitted on her behalf by PunkPoet (all these ladies are part of the Goldsboro Writers Group!)
Southern Seven Line Poem
Win, lose
working the dream
walls of solid heat,
dirt, tobacco worms,
ticks, white T shirt
a winter coat,
head wet with sweat.
Nancy Seate 2013
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How about calling the poems, ‘Southern Sevens’? I thought of ‘Lucky Sevens’, like the cigarettes, considering our tobacco growing heritage, but it sounds too much like I’m playing poker. 🙂
That’s my two, I mean seven, cents.
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