Sherry Chandler

Dorothy Sutton

Women writing in Kentucky today share two themes.

One is a loss of culture. Not nostalgia precisely, though it can look a little like it. Rather an urgency to record what was of value about the older skower ways before they disappear.

The second is an honoring of our elders, a need to record the extraordinary heroism of their ordinary lives (a phrasing I think I may have stolen from my friend Georgia Green Stamper).

In Backing Into Mountains (Wind Publications, 2009), Dorothy Sutton explores these themes with extraordinary grace, whether it be the Appalachian schoolbus drivers and mechanics of the title poem:

Your life depends on brakes and lights
up here in these Kentucky hills.
The school bus whines and groans to climb
through hollers, with creek-beds the only roads.
. . .
We try to maintain machines that can roll
without crashing, hold the young ones
back from the edge . . .

or Uncle Lester in “No Man’s Land”

One day he was husking the corn,
feeding the greedy, muddy pigs,
. . .
the next day halfway around the world
in Paris with the prostitutes of Pigalle
. . .
The next day mired in confused
trough trenches of muddy slop
. . .
the next day back in Pike County
slopping the hogs, begging the world
to stop . . .

This selection shows not only Sutton’s great compassion but also her craft: the circling around the sounds and images of pigs and slop in a way that is both humorous and heartbreaking.

Sutton explores far and wide in the matter of Kentucky, from Gorgeous George and Casey Jones to Robert Penn Warren and George Keats.

“Casey Jones” is one of my favorite poems in this collection. Having grown up in a singing/strumming family, as many of us here in Kentucky did, I love the play on the theme of this most famous of all train ballads (not to be confused with the Grateful Dead’s Casey Jones) .

We’re the children of “Casey” Jones
from Cayce, Kentucky. In 1900,
Casey Jones died trying
to find the time he’d misplaced somewhere
between Memphis and Mississippi.
. . .
They dug him out, one legend says,
one hand on the throttle, to increase his speed,
the other hand firmly gripping the brake.

Here is the central dilemma of the theme of loss of culture. We tend, us older folk in Kentucky, to come from timeless sorts of places but now we are very much caught up in the rush of time. Our roots are in the folkways, our branches embrace Richard Dawkins and Picasso.

And right about now, Uncle Lester is crying “Whoa, damn you,” not just to the mule of the twentieth century but also to that last metaphor. Both of ‘em kind of got the bits in their teeth and took off.

Here’s a much better extended metaphor, from the Richmond Register:

Dublin poet Eileen Casey said recently of Sutton’s work: “The title poem of this collection pays tribute to the tenacity of the bus drivers of Appalachia, a cultural region in the Eastern United States, forced to breathtakingly negotiate very difficult terrain. In the same way, Dorothy Sutton takes each poem (and us) from one imaginative location to another, by the sheer force of her deep and intimate knowledge of what it is to be human. The poems are exquisitely crafted, steering through words, like those Appalachian bus drivers, trying to maintain machines that can roll without crashing, hold the young ones back from the edge, carry them all the places they need to go. These poems are a joy to read, in terms of capturing the cadences of lives lived and voices heard in the Kentucky of her childhood, different and yet the same as mine in Ireland. An emotional bridge is formed between Kentucky and the rest of the world, indeed a breathtaking reading experience.”

Dorothy Sutton is reading this Tuesday, March 9, at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning’s Kentucky Great Writer series. It’s an evening to celebrate Wind Publications. Her fellow readers are J. Stephen Rhodes, author of The Time I Didn’t Know What to Do Next (my remarks here) and Normandi Ellis, author of Fresh-Fleshed Sisters. The festivities begin with open mic signups at 6:30, featured readings begin at 7:30.

Eclectic Living Room

The Eclectic Living Room meets at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning one week before every Kentucky Great Writers reading to discuss and “celebrate” the work. The discussion is led by Leatha Kendrick, who is a wonderful appreciator of other people’s work and who, as a friend just said to me, reads like a writer. Most of those who attend the discussion are also writers. So, participants have an opportunity not only to explore the work that they will soon be hearing but also to hone their own writing skills. Each session ends with a writing prompt or exercise.

The Morris Book Shop is there to give participants a chance to look at and buy the books in question.

And sometimes, as last night, the group is privileged to have the publisher present to add his insights to both the writers and the publishing process.

At last night’s session we discussed the work of Normandi Ellis, Dorothy Sutton, and J. Stephen Rhodes, all three of whom have books out from Wind Publications and all three of whom will be reading next Tuesday, February 9, at the Carnegie Center as part of the Kentucky Great Writers Series (funded by LexArts). The featured readers begin at 7:30; the open mic begins at 6:30. Local folk, mark it on your calendar.

That address is 251 West Second Street, Lexington.

I consider all three of these fine writers personal friends and I have featured work by Steve, Dorothy, and Normandi here on the blog. I can attest that they are all great readers. It will be a fine evening.

I guess this reads a little bit like an infomercial, and I guess that’s all right. Who can you praise if you can’t praise your friends?

Some kudos

In an e-mail, Michael Czarnecki of FootHills Publishing mentioned that 2010 marks their 25^th year of publishing. In that 25 years, FootHills has brought some great chapbooks into the world, including mine and Helen Losse’s, which are #s 4 and 5 in their Poets on Peace series. I see that they have just released POP #14. FootHills chapbooks are fine handstitched examples of chapbook art.

Michael will also turn 60 in 2010. A banner year for Wheeler Hill.

I also need to announce the advent of a brand-new press here in Kentucky, Accents Publishing. Launched by owner/editor Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,

Our mission is to promote brilliant voices in an affordable publication format, and to foster an exchange of literature among different world cultures and languages.

And ambitious plan. I’ve talked to Katerina about her goal, which is to produce small attractive books that sell for about $5. It’s a sort of micro-marketing strategy of publishing and I wish them well.

We at Accents Publishing believe that readers should be able to afford the books we publish. That’s why we’re committed to providing books that offer great value at a reasonable price.

The Press will have a premiere event to launch its first book on February 4 at Common Grounds Coffee House, 343 East High Street, Lexington, from 7:00 – 10:00 pm.

Last but not least, I want to mention that one of my very favorite places in Central Kentucky, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, received an honorable mention for the MetLife Innovative Artist Space Award for 2009. More than 30,000 people visited the Carnegie Center in 2009 to participate in their literacy programming. I was one of them.

The abstract of their MetLife application reads

In 1990, Lexington’s mayor created a committee to discover a reuse for the vacant Carnegie library building; from that group, the idea for a community learning and arts center was born. The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning helps people find joy in writing, reading, and learning new things. In addition to offering a gallery and performing arts events, the center’s emphasis on writing and promoting books by Kentucky authors has made it the literary hub of Kentucky. The building is also home to learning and arts organizations, an author, and writing/book discussion groups. It is also the site for other non-Carnegie events, including the Kentucky Women Writers Conference.

The Longest Short Story Ever Written in Lexington

There’s still time to participate in this activity in celebration of the National Day on Writing. Lexington author Ed McClanahan (O The Clear Moment) will write the starting paragraph. Between 7 AM -5 PM, add 1-250 words at one of the sites listed below:

7 AM- 9 AM
Starbucks – Chevy Chase

9 AM-11 AM
Starbucks-downtown
Third Street Stuff and Coffee
Eagle Creek Library
The Carnegie Center

11 AM- 1 PM
Barnes and Noble- Hamburg
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Carnegie Center

1 PM-3 PM
The Morris Book Shop- Southland Drive
Waldenbooks- Fayette Mall
Northside Library
The Carnegie Center

3 PM- 5 PM
Village Branch Library
Central Library
Common Grounds Coffee
The Carnegie Center

The Longest Short Story Ever Written in Lexington, which will be authored by numerous people on National Day on Writing, will share a snapshot of Lexington and people’s lives on this day. Join the stellar line-up of local celebrities contributing to the community piece, including Ed McClanahan, Bobbie Ann Mason, Marcia Hurlow, Leatha Kendrick, Milton Toby, Steve Vest, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Kirby Gann, Rena Baer, Neil Chethik and Jan Isenhour, with many more literary icons sure to make their mark.

The story will be written on butcher paper and segments of Lexington’s Longest Short Story will be taped up inside the Carnegie Center to create an official Learning Zone. Excerpts of the completed work will be published online in the National Gallery of Writing and other sources.

At 5:30 PM, the day-long events will culminate with a CELEBRATION at the Carnegie Center and the public is invited to attend this free event. First Lady Beshear will serve as our keynote speaker.

The shape of a poem

I am taking an eight-week poetry class at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Called “The Path of a Poem,” the class is led by Leatha Kendrickk. I take Leatha’s classes whenever they’re offered because she is not only a fine poet and a fine teacher with a wide-ranging knowledge of poetry and prosody but also because her classes always attract the best poets in the area, so the quality of the discussion is high and often technical.

All of which leads me to my point, which is that last night was my night to be critiqued and I had submitted the sonnet crown that has been languishing in my drawer in one form or another for, well, ten years if you go back to some of the root ideas.

The verdict last night was the same as always: there’s some great stuff here but it doesn’t quite make it all the way there.

I ask myself why I keep resurrecting this monster. Over the years I’ve been forced to abandon any number of poems by the knowledge that they were never going to quite make it. As William Stafford says, we have to write our bad poems as well as our good ones.

But this poem is different.

Maybe it’s just my way of running scales. Even master musicians have to do it. Maybe this is just my practice piece, the poem where I burnish up my formal chops.

But why bother with form? Part of the reason is explained by this passage I ran across this morning reading in Dennis O’Driscoll’s Stepping Stones. Interviews with Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). The question was: Would you be offended to be called a formalist?. The answer, in part:

I wouldn’t be offended but I think it would be a mistake. “Formalist” to me sounds like a kind of doctrinaire position. I totally believe in form; but quite often, when people use the term, they mean shape rather than form. There’s the sonnet shape, fair enough, but it’s not just a matter of rhyming the eight lines and the other six; they happen to be set one on top of each other like two boxes, but they’re more like a torso and pelvis. There has to be a little bit of muscle movement, it has to be alive in some sort of way. A moving poem doesn’t just mean that it touches you, it means it has to move itself along as a going linguistic concern. Form is not like a pasty cutter — the dough has to move and discover its own shape. [p. 447]

If you think about that — you don’t impose a sonnet shape on a poem, you write a poem that discovers its shape as a sonnet.

Sounds mystical but it’s a matter of running the scales until your fingers bleed and then, if you also have some talent (not necessarily genius), you can improvise, you can be free-form within the form.

I think that’s why I keep worrying at my sonnet crown. Every time I ratchet it up to the next level of competence, I discover a level beyond that.

If I can get it right, maybe I’ll have become a poet.

Which, when I think about it, will never happen. If one practices poetry, one is always becoming. That’s part of the deal.

Friday morning musing

Well, well, well. Congratulations to Barack Obama for having won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. In the last eight years, Peace Prizes have gone to Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and now Barack Obama. I think perhaps the Nobel committee is sending the United States a message, inviting us to come home to what they see as our true role in the world.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Herta Müller, a Romanian-born German novelist with whose work I am not familiar.

Coming down to earth and closer to home, I had a big time at the Stars with Accents reading last night. Katerina Stoykova-Klemerer and James Brown put together a great set of readers with a wide variety of styles and genres from a great series of shows.

Accents, by the way, made the top three local radio shows in Ace Magazine’s annual Best of Lex ratings. Not bad for a newcomer who interviews poets!

And speaking of interviewed poets, I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend and fellow Green River Writers poet Sheri Wright, who in her September 25 interview on Accents chose my Dance the Black-Eyed Girl as the notable book of the week. She read my poem “Toxicodendron radicans.”

Sheri and Sonja DeVries were partnered for a great interview. You can listen to the podcast of that show and most of the others at this link. Sheri has a couple of notable books out herself, including one that gets my vote for best title, Contains Scenes of Indigenous Nudity. Her discussion of the origins of that title and her musings on why “indigenous” nudity is okay while other nudity is considered pornographic are worth a listen, especially her reading of the poem “Contains Scenes of Indigenous Nudity, the Upper Half.”

You can buy Sheri’s books at Carmichael’’s in Louisville.

By the way, WRFL was taping last night’s readings and I think highlights will be played on future broadcasts of Accents.

Carnegie Center’s Next Great Writers

The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning has announced the finalists in its Next Great Writers Contest. Some good friends and one relation in the list.

The relation is my son, Morgan Williams. I’m right proud of him.  The reading is going on as I post this. Rush over if you can.

THE 2009 NEXT GREAT WRITERS COMPETITION: FINALISTS

Jesse Sisken, Lexington KY
Jessica Swafford, Georgetown KY
Sarah Glenn, Lexington KY
Jason Grant, Lexington KY
Janet Holloway, Lexington KY
Eric Sutherland, Lexington KY
Jason Williams, Winchester KY
Whitney Groves, Lexington KY
Morgan Williams, Paris KY
Virginia Dulworth, Lexington KY
Eva Cox, Paris KY
Matthew Haughton, Lexington KY
Sacha Pruitt, Lexington KY
Charles Edward White, Lexington KY
James K. Brown, Lexington KY
Barbara Phillips, Lexington KY
Hannah LeGris, Lexington, KY
Kari Evely, Lexington KY
Katrina Boone, Lexington KY

Also reading tonight, the THE 2009 YOUNG PEOPLE’S POETRY CONTEST: FINALISTS

CinAstasha Cable
Annie Deitz
William Ding
Ittai Eres
Charlie Frederick
Ezekiel Grier
Sam Hayden
Gabe Hillyard
Julian Little
Dani Miller
Luc Morgan
John Nichols
Natalie Pacheco
Tamara Ray
Maggie Rue
Rena Sakai
Rebecca Sanders
Suzanne Seivers
Madison Shifflett
Abigail Winfield