Sonic Qualities and the Transient Nature of Local Literature
The view from Point Park, Chattanooga, Tennessee
The poems appear in the recording. A prompt follows the article for those who like to write.
On Tuesday, January 23, I offered a generative poetry workshop at The Chattery, a community-based learning center in Chattanooga. In one exercise, I discussed the sonic qualities of poems, before asking the participants to write. I felt as though I were back in middle school English hearing about alliteration, consonance, and assonance. The following two poems pay attention to these qualities, and you can probably pick out my pattern of repeating sounds.
Prom Night Amorous alligators awaken to red-rimmed skies. Sun going down, they bellow bellicose greetings across the swamp. Looking for some action, a dominant male slaps silent water with his jaw. Lesser males leave the pond to seek action elsewhere; wander through subdivisions. Amorous alligators arrive on decks and porches, bask beneath lawn sprinklers. They give a new meaning to an old country song, “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.” One should not fool with amorous alligators high on hormones. Watchful wildlife officers arrive to relocate them and restrict the movements of amorous alligators. The Names of Trees Smoke curled skyward as trees forgot their names, oak leaf and maple leaf first desiccated, robbed of moisture, and then incinerated. In a no-disco inferno, they curled and fell. They forgot their names, just as my father on his invalid bed forgot my name and then his own before the coma took him to fly like an eagle as promised by Isaiah. This morning the sun burned through the cellophane red maple leaves behind the house. Thin as my elderly father’s skin they gave the light an appearance of Christmastide.
The Chattery is a lovely community-based resource, and that may be what got me thinking of the landscape of regional literature. I remembered some publications that have included my work, periodicals such as the Mildred Haun Review, published at Walters State Community College in Morristown. They have published my works in the last two annual editions, and I am preparing to submit some poems for the 2024 edition.
The Mildred Haun Review regularly publishes several regional authors year after year. The college also offers an annual conference on Appalachian Culture, associated with the publication. Their efforts are certainly worthy of our support. Some of our other regional publications have not fared as well.
Occasionally, I will hear a poem in a reading or workshop and think that it would be perfect for the literary magazine Number One, published by the faculty of Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, Tennessee. Unfortunately, the magazine ceased publication early in the Covid-19 era and has not resumed. The magazine appeared once a year for several years and published my poetry for the final three of those years.
I learned about Number One from Tennessee Poet Bill Brown. Bill suffered a massive heart attack last year and no longer writes, at least in the earthly domain. He was a mentor to many of us and his passing leaves a hole in the universe of Tennessee poets.
Several of Bill’s poems, including my favorite, “On a Park Bench in Heaven,” appear on the website of Nashville Arts magazine https://nashvillearts.com/2010/06/poetry-bill-brown/. The piece also includes a photograph of Bill, much younger than when I first met him. His poems speak of family, the earth, and the fragility of human life. The poem “Bomb” comes to mind in the last category.
Earlier, we saw the demise of 2nd and Church. The editors were kind enough to include two of my poems, my review of Rick Steve’s book Travel as a Political Act, and my interview with Jim Pfitzer, a native of East Ridge who was, at the time, crossing the continent with his living history presentation depicting conservationist Aldo Leopold, noted for his book A Sand County Almanac.
One of my poems which 2nd and Church printed is “Salvador Dali Meets Gertrude Stein.” I had sent several poems that they rejected for previous issues and stopped sending poetry. Then the editor sent me a note saying that I had not sent anything in a while and should send a few poems.
I thought they just wanted more material for the slush pile, so I decided to send the craziest poem imaginable and give them something to think about. Surprisingly, they published the poem. Although it is a bit whimsical, I have since come to appreciate its sonic qualities. One friend said that it was the best poem I had ever written. I am not sure about that, but I appreciate its place in my body of work.
Salvador Dali Meets Gertrude Stein Nebulous nebulae, nebulae, nebulae nebulous Negotiate nebulous nebulae, oversee weather cloudy and serene. Serene sirens negotiate nebulous nebulae with squad cars of intergalactic police as we negotiate a tapestry of weather symbols and barrel staves in water inhabited by golden goldfish and copper piranhas. Copper cop car piranhas eat us out of house and home, house and home house, house, home, house, home. Ascend cirrus cloud, cloud, cloud, cirrus stairs. Find no piranhas here and chum for sharks. Catch any sharks, chum? Chum, chum, chum for tiger, tiger, burning bright, tiger sharks pursue us on this journey with no destination to love but the question itself of who ate the last shark steak in the refrigerator. Shark steak, steak, steak, shark steak shark. Man-eating shark has a stake in this tale and has a tail to tell it with like Ferlinghetti's dog, if indeed it is the shark that eats the man and. not the man eating the shark stake, the SOB took the last one. Gnash your teeth you sharkless humans and humorless sharks. Gnash, gnash, teeth, teeth gnash human teeth gnash on shark flesh irony.
Prompt: Try writing a poem in which you pay attention to the sonic qualities of the words. It can be about a family member or an animal like the first two poems. You can abandon meaning altogether and just focus on the sounds of the words.