This would be more appropriate for November, but, whatever, here's a poem called "Solace," by Emily Clark. Per A Brief Anthology of Kentucky Poetry, published in 1936 by UK, she was born in Hopkinsville in 1913 and graduated from Bethel College before teaching high-school kids in Trenton.
Another I a time ago ...
A few weeks only? More like a year ...
Sat here upon this hill,
My spirit light when all the world
Was gray with late November.
I came to tell my joy to sharp-limned trees
And silent earth and gravely moving waters,
But tree and soil and stream were then so void
Of pulse and living color that
I crept away, ashamed of my own happiness.
And now this new and other I
Is here upon this hill that is the same
And yet is changed. This time
I come to tell of bitterness and death
Of hope with me. But I cannot.
Instead, I lie quite prone, my face away
From the secret song of the busy waves,
From the richness new of green-towned trees.
Again, frustration! I beat a fretting hand
Against the potent bosom of the earth. O, Nature,
"Great companion!" Where are you, "comforter of men?"
With suddenness the sun dropped through the trees
A kiss of limpid gold upon my troubled cheek,
An oak next shook a leaf into my hair,
The breast beneath my own throbbed deep in sympathy,
And, looking down, I watched with indrawn breath
A Lilliputian tendril curling steadily about
My ruthless finger that disturbed it in its bed.
Finally, another English teacher, originally of Guthrie and now of my church in Madisonville, tells me that the Todd County town at which Ms. Clark taught is locally pronounced, "Trennon." This woman also says they call the crop, "tobalko."
I liked this poem, and I am fascinated as ever by the culture that created it. All those smart kids spending all those long hot summers reading book after book because: (a) there's not that much to do, and (b) a certain class of rural Southerner worshiped language, history, and culture with an extravagance almost impossible to imagine today.
ReplyDeleteI like this poem, too. I've been talking about it for about a week. To your point, it's not just the skill and time it took to write it--it's also the time invested in what were probably many, many experiences that yielded the two intense moments reflected in the poem.
ReplyDeleteIt's not often that I beat a fretting hand against the potent bosom of the earth. The last time, in fact, was when UK came back against Notre Dame and Tyler Hansborough's brother last season. My left thumb has never felt the same since.
I agree with your point, although as a hot-tempered Southerner myself, I am not terribly surprised that someone from Todd County beat a fretting hand against the potent bosom of the earth. When my power kept going out during the UK-Vandy game on Saturday, the bosom of the earth certainly felt my wrath.
ReplyDeleteWhat I really like about this poem is the ambition behind it -- all those words like "sharp-limned," "green-towned," "limpid," "Lilliputian," and "tendril." Also, the whole mood and tone of the poem is extremely literary -- it is clearly the work of someone who has wandered through the woods and fields of Kentucky, reading out loud to herself.
Tyler Hansborough's brother was annoying.
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