Having toiled up Parnassus (located, by the way, near Stickleyville, Virgina), we see a few folks walking along the trail ahead of us. These are the crafted writers. The careful writers. Thomas Meyer is one of this rare crew: all three of his offerings are worth coming back to. His “The Merchant’s Daughter” is especially fine.

***

My grief or her giraffe,
I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Wild flowers. Or will power?
What were the words? Yellow moved

through the fields two days ago.
And it was evening.

*

A white donkey.
A red barn.

The yellow light
the mind holds

becomes a thought.

*

For miles
the dry hills roll
in any direction.

***

Hank Lazar, too, makes the disjointed, the fragmented, not a badge of “belonging” to the experimentalists, but a manner of expression, and a manner (sans hubris) of displaying argument, thought. There’s a care in the utterance.

crossed wolf river ran along a road of words

listened in the forward movement of john’s blue train

distance is time & miles minutes crossed hobolochiito creek

linguistic visitant….

I wish this program would allow me to get the spacing correct. “from The New Spirit” is indeed fine writing.

Writers of place who should be mentioned: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers is accurate with her language and works within the cultural parameters of the South. I especially like “Ezekiel Saw de Wheel.”

Poor Ezekiel, what
A lonely man.
Feel sorry for him:
who cares to notice
Ezekiel’s cracked brow,
his holy frowns?
***

This is genuine stuff.

Kalamu ya Salaam, also a remarkable writer, gives us another take on the South. “The Moment of the First Day” is especially compelling.

Any Young is yet another poet who bears close reading for his profound connection to Southern folklore.

We end our appreciation with the remarkable “from Brambu Drezi, Book III” by Jake Berry, an experimental text fully situated in the South. You have to experience Berry’s writing to believe it. I recommend his work heartily, and will not fail to seek out more of it in future.

Now sweating, winded, we’ve finished our journey. Perhaps we’ve been a tad harsh on those we’ve encountered, but the harshness comes from the fact that your correspondent has also created his share of crippled, fragmented, blenderized, ironic, hubristic texts. He asks the forgiveness of everyone he’s mentioned in less than glowing terms, and hopes it will be bestowed upon him.

Christy Sheffield Sanford claps her hands three times and suddenly we hear mandolins and banjos kick up a rousing break-down from a nearby grove. As we crush forward among the crowd of experimental poets, we see Thomas Holley Chivers advancing under the trees, wearing a crown and dressed in an ermine-trimmed robe. All around us are the fine poets we mentioned on our climb up. There’s Camille Martin dancing with Joel Daily, and Skip Fox writing notes to Bill Lavender, who shakes his head, laughs, and writes right back. There’s Bob Grumman cooling off under a shade tree with Jim Leftwich, who lifts a six ounce bottle of Coke squints his eyes, and examines the bottom for cracks. Jake Berry is mumbling something over what looks for all the world to be a voodoo doll, while poor John Lowther is still crying out for someone to untie him and pull the blind-fold from his eyes! Chivers is shaking Hank Lazer’s hand. He whispers that Edgar Allen Poe might be stopping in for a visit later on. The party lasts long into the night, and many of the crowd take the journey down Parnassus by lamp light, while a few hearty souls remain drinking Jack Black and arguing about poetics until the sun starts to rim the mountain tops and the mourning doves coo in the pines. But the big question remains: where is Andre Codrescu?