Sherry Chandler

from In Memory of W. B. Yeats
(d. Jan 1939)

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

—W. H. Auden, text from Poetry Speaks

Everybody knows this poem but I think it’s good occasionally to look at that line — “poetry makes nothing happen” — in context.

The Fifth Annual Harriette Arnow Conference on Appalachian Literature and Culture will be held on April 13-14 in Somerset, Kentucky. Theme for this year is Weeping for the Cumberlands: Environmentalism in Text and Context. Erik Reece will be the keynote speaker. For more information contact Lynn.Crabtree@kctcs.edu.

Evening with Poets, a reading to celebrate the publication of Kudzu, will be held on April 19 in the Stephens Library at Hazard Community and Technical College. Featured poet is Amelia Blossom Pegram.

HCTC’s Spring Writers Conference will be held on April 20. Featured presenters are Amerlia Blossom Pegram, Gurney Norman, Erik Reece, and Edmund August. This conference is free. For more information about either the Kudzu reading or the conference, contact Scott.Lucero@kctcs.edu