Sherry Chandler

Kentucky Writer’s Day, April 24

Tomorrow is Kentucky Writers Day, an official state “holiday,” and to mark the occasion, the Kentucky Arts Council is sponsoring a reading and reception in the rotunda of the Capitol Building in Frankfort.

The reading will feature our current poet laureate, Jane Gentry, and two former laureates, James Baker Hall and Joe Survant. As an additional treat, the finalist and runner-up in Kentucky’s Poetry Out Loud competition will perform their winning recitations.

Readings are at 10:00 a.m. EDT with a reception to follow at 11:00.

This event is free and open to the public. I plan to be there.

Bill Goodman talks to Jane Gentry on KET’s One to One. You can watch the video or listen to the audio. Thanks to JimT for the tip.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of the celebration of Kentucky’s writers, I give you a poem that Maurice Manning attributes to Gilbert Imlay, a man who might be called the first Kentucky writer. There is some irony in that, as there is about so much of Kentucky’s history. I’ve talked about Imlay here , here, and here and his novel The Emigrants here. The text of this poem, that appeared in the English magazine The Philanthropist on September 7, is from Manning’s excellent poetic biography of Daniel Boone, A Companion for Owls (Harcourt, 2004):

AN ODE TO KENTUCKY,
BY AN EMIGRANT

Hail modern Eden! — hail thy blooming sweets!
Thy promis’d favours, and thy fragrance, greets
My ardent wishes to salute thy plains,
And plant thy meadows with European grains.
Hail happy spot! that yields thy sweets profuse,
To waste in air, or rot in morning dews
Uncultivated—unenjoy’d by Man,
Reserv’d for latter ages in th’ Almighty’s plan.
No longer let thy fertile region waste
Its fruit (spontaneous fitted for the taste),
But let me now thy profited sweets caress,
Thy rich profusion taste, thy meads possess.
May heav’n inspire a train of honest swains,
emigrate, and cultivate thy plains,
And prove in earnest, what was said before,
That Eden now, is what in days of yore
It was to Adam, ‘ere the Garden fence
Had felt a breach from Satan’s impudence.
many sons of Freedom catch the fire,
And from those guilty madd’ing scenes retire,
(Which now envelope Europe more and more,
And threaten judgments on Great Britain’s shore)
To those sweet Arbours in Kentucky’s grant,
Whose rich production will supply each want;
Whose ample resources, with little toil,
Will crown their labours, and their cares beguile.
No taxes there oppress the lab’ring kind,
No tyrant Kings in chains their slaves to bind;
There are no game laws to prevent a man
From shooting hares, or pheasants if he can,
The Rivers there are free as we can wish,
And every man may catch a dish of fish.
No laws of primogeniture, to wrong
The most uncar’d for infant of the throng;
There are no lazy Parsons, who demand
The tenth or all the produce or the land;
Nor Pope, nor Bishop, to enslave the mind,
But all may liberty of conscience find.
No Burke’s, no Pitt’s, no Windham’s, nor Dundas’s,
To stigmatize you all as swine or asses;
There is no tax for “apeing your superiors,”
For all are equal there, and none inferiors.
There are no Nabobs, who from Indian plunder
Return, and GII their neighbours all with wonder;
No pamper’d hosts of pensioners you’ll find,
live upon th’ industry of mankind.
No hireling spies, nor foul informers there,
To herd amongst you, merely to ensnare
No harden’d crimps in government employ,
To steal your children, or your youths decoy
No prostitution stains that happy clime,
Because no Prince to patronize the crime;
But every man may there in peace combine,
He leaves his progeny a competes
Then hasten to Kentucky’s fruitful soil.
Nor longer in European fetters toil;
Possess this land of liberty and plenty,
Arid say “the despots of the earth have sent ye”

1. Kentucky Writers Day, April 24
2. A Kentucky source influence for Eliot’s “The Wasteland?”
3. Journal of Kentucky Studies
4. Kentucky Literary Awards for 2004
5. April 1

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