Sherry Chandler

I’ll tell you I’ve gotten in a lot of trouble for the post below called To Be Appalachian – and not, I regret to say, because anybody saw any controversy in what I said about regional identity.

No, I just made a bunch of mistakes. I linked Ron Houchins to Death and the River, a collection that’s 8 years old (though a worthwhile collection and still in print) and not to Among Wordless Things, his current prize-winning book. Then I got Brooks Carvers place of origin wrong — but Brooks I read in a bio that you trace your roots to North Carolina, so maybe that’s how I got that in my head.

Now Vince Tweddell is twitting me for hyping his reputation. Vince is too honest to let me get away with calling him a “rising” young novelist. And it is true that “aspiring” is more accurate. So that correction is made. After all “aspiring” is just “rising” with a couple of extra letters.

My apologies to all. I do try to be accurate. I guess the mountain air had gone to my head.

Gellius audierat patuum obiurgare solere,
si quis delicias diceret aut feceret.
hoc ne ipsi accideret, patrui perdepsuit ipsam
uxorem et patruum reddidit Harpocraten.
quod voluit fecit: nam, quamvis irrumet ipsum
nunc patruum, verbum non faciet patruus.

Gellius had heard that his Uncle was ‘customed to fuss
and to chastise if anyone said or did the least thing indelicate.
Lest that befall him, he’s pinched and paddled, fiddled
and faddled, middled and maddened Uncle’s own wife.
So, he’s re-minted Unk in the form of a
small, dumb Harpocrates.
What he willed he’s done: now if he irrumate Uncle
himself, Unk would not say word one.

The verb depsere from which perdepsuit derives is so rare it does not appear in most dictionaries. It means to knead, and Cicero found it to be too unacceptably vulgar for polite speech. Grundyism rears its head in every century but poetry persists in longing after summa dat sweet jelly roll.

Harpocrates was the Egyptian god Horus, usually depicted as an infant with a finger in his mouth. This came to be interpreted as a recommendation for silence.