Sherry Chandler

Lynnell Edwards

Suite for Red River Gorge

I. Whistling Arch
(Arch in Formation)

In high winds air rushing through the low opening whines, giving the arch its name. This whine is something that happens very rarely.
                    �Kentucky�s Land of the Arches: The Red River Gorge

Here geologic time tumbles
from the sandstone face in great slabs
of rock, progress marked
on some same clock keeping pace
with glaciers, the passing of comets,
volcano formation.

The stone�s lonely O frames
mountaintop, dark gorge,
catches a patch of white sky
in its aperture. It shows
where time was, and now passed

sings its only hymn to a congregation
of centipede and snake, blackbird
perched on an ancient laurel,
trillium unfurled,
its pale ear pressed to the stars.

II. Hell�s Kitchen

If there is a moderate to high level of water in the creek, do not attempt this walk for this little canyon becomes a death trap when the flow is strong.
                    �Kentucky�s Land of the Arches: The Red River Gorge

In fact, it is hell to get to. Bad
signage, a backtracked trail, then
bushwacking down a steep pitch,
pine-needle slick, to frenzied shallows
where sandstone shoulders hunch
above a boggy shore. We splash through
where the log flow once banged and rocked
into jams, choked in the narrows
of Swift Camp Creek. We check the book
for our location, certify our position
against the photo�s perspective, smug
that we have not mistaken Bear Pen Narrows,
the easier route, for the original Hell�s Kitchen.

Here, men would set a pot of coffee
firing on the banks, make camp, wait
for the upriver ruckus to roar past.
They pried apart the crossed timber
in a roiling kettle that could break a man
caught in its fray, tumble him
to the bottom, head and bone smashed
against the bed, his body bucked
to the surface and fetched
with a hooked staff, racked
like lumber on the rocks.

But this low summer pool threatens
no one, and the shouts of industry, danger,
gone with the railroad, the collapsed ties
sodden and splintered at bank�s edge.
We consider the best path
to our next point of interest�
D. Boone�s Hut and the hidden still�
though ahead we see the truth:
There is no good way out,
deep water ahead, a sheer sandstone face
insisting on either side, only the same
stony road of good intentions.

III. Lover�s Leap

This overlook offers possibly the most awesome straight-down view in the area.
                    �Kentucky�s Land of the Arches: The Red River Gorge

Darling, I could never jump, cannot
even go near this shifting sandstone edge
without a sink and swirl in my gut,
sudden, shallow panting and damp brow.
At first whisper of dizzy breeze, I grip
the wind blistered branch of scrub
clawing the limestone face, gasp
at the straight-down view, the grey veil
of mist sifting across crenellated green.

There are leaps like this
in every high and wild place
where the signature ghosts remain:
an Indian maid�s face unraveling
in a waterfall�s eternal surge;
a river current singing the names
of drowned and traitorous love;
wheeling shadows on a red canyon wall
of two pitched to misplaced bliss.

What difficult trail did they travel
to get to this point? Did he and she
step in silence, one before the other
twisting through rough brush,
lifting their bodies over a blunt rock ledge?
And did they search for signs
along the way, the ram-in-thicket salvation
that would release them from their terminal pact?

I breathe in, check my step,
make a mute and final pledge:
The rush and skip of my erratic heart?
This swan dive of desire?
I will take it to the grave.

— Lynnell Edwards, originally published in The Valparaiso Review
Reprinted by permission of the author.

Lynnell Edwards is the author of The Farmer's Daughter (2003) and The Highwayman's Wife (2007), both published by Red Hen Press. Her poetry and reviews have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Dos Passos Review, Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review, Pleiades, Poetry East, Rain Taxi, Southern Poetry Review, and Verse Daily.

Edwards, the recipient of a 2007 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, directs the writing center and teaches at Bellarmine University.

The Highwayman’s Wife

Lynnell Edwards’s second book, The Highwayman’s Wife (Red Hen Press, 2007), is a collection organized on frames within frames.

Overarching all, like the roof to the house, is a sort of Shepherd’s Calendar for modern times. In 1579, Edmund Spenser published the most famous English Shepherd’s Calendar, a series of pastoral poems spoken by a “simple” shepherd, one for each month of the year. It was an imitation of the Italian poet Baptista Mantuanus’s Adulescentia, which were in turn an imitation of the Latin poet Virgil’s Eclogues, which were in turn an imitation of the Greek poet Theocritus’s Bucolics. It’s a tradition Maurice Manning is also buying into with his own Bucolics, a book I’ve discussed here.

Edwards’s poems refer to a considerably later Shepherd’s Calendar, that of John Clare (also here). Written in 1827, Clare’s work was a protest against the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions that were transforming the English countryside. His poetry tended toward the elegiac. He is often referred to as England’s most important poets of the natural world.

Although Clare was known as the “Northamptonshire Peasant Poet” and Edwards has written a book entitled The Farmer’s Daughter (Red Hen, 2003), resemblances between the pair are few. In Edwards’s world, the changes Clare was opposing are a done deal. Her calendar, each beginning with an epigraph from Clare is mostly suburban, with little of the archaic or bucolic.

Except for the prelude poem, The Highwayman’s Wife occurs within the calendar. The first poem in the collection is January, entitled “Cold As”

It is cold this morning, cold as
ice cream with the Eskimos, cold
as a witches, cold as the comfort
of the brute alarm that pulled you
into this darkness. …

The last poem is December, entitled “Snow Day”

Lovely the snow as it floats from the sky, and lovely
the bare trees pillowed in white; lovely the martin
tracking across the playground walk. And lovely
the shout of Snow! that startles the class from
its drill and practice…

And all the other months are shuffled throughout the collection like cards.

Within the overarching frame of the calendar are several other collections, the most prominent being the sonnet-like sequence that makes up the second numbered section of the book: “enter the highwayman.” There are eleven of these loose sonnets, twelve if you count the prelude poem “Sonnet for the Highwayman.”

Edwards has a considerable edge and “Sonnet for the Highwayman” lets us know just what kind of a manifesto we’re going to find in this collection. It’s a poem that promise to ravish the ravisher:

I will rob you, lover. Cut your purse,
pilfer the gold coins stitched inside your shirt
when I reach for a kiss, ungirdle your bright sword
for my own device, whirl away into the Highland night.
And you thinking this is the safe house . . .

The highwayman’s life is not all that free and easy as envisioned by these poems. From “Weapons, the Road”

Pistols, derringers, daggers, ropes, no matter
what you pack you’re not prepared. Disaster
happens quick from lack of feed as power,
your beast no more reliable than the weather:

It is certainly not honorable and romantic. From “How It’s Done”

When drunkards stagger from the lighted inn,
or husbands travel to town, helpless, burdened
with a foundered hog, a ragged goat,
ambush is the surest. . . .

Another shorter series is the five poem “Suite for Wives,” one each for Medusa, Helen, Juno, Penelope, and Cassandra. As with the Shepherd’s Calendar, these classic suffering women are viewed through a modern lens. The poems are an outlet for Edwards’s gift for satire. Here’s the beginning of the poem about Cassandra, called “Trophy” because Cassandra was quite literally a trophy wife, and who, of course, knows where all this is leading:

Agamemnon, baby, hot
from acquisition, trade,
splendid astride your plunder,
speed me across
the wine-dark lake
in your terrible vessel.
Gilt me as you will:
I am your morning-glory, daylily,
bikini-clad figurehead
wedged in the thrust
of a cigarette-sleek bow.

Agamemnon has met his match.

So to speak.

As Cassandra has met her doom — and knows it.

One more series interleaved through the collection — the Last Call poems play with the notion of mixed drinks. “Last Call: Mint Julep” is typical:

Make it despite impossible odds,
trifecta of sugar, sweet mint,
bourbon tipped over ice. . .

There are, of course, poems in this 99-page collection that do not fit into a series, many of which reflect Edwards’s concern with the odd mix of rural and suburban that is life in present-day Kentucky, and perhaps much of the South as it becomes industrialized. Edwards presents these changes with a mixture of humor and anger, as I think my clips illustrate. Her language is fast and sure, as tough, as the babe on the cover photograph.

I enjoyed every word of it, sometimes raising my power fist and crying “Right on!”

__________
Update: You can read Lynnell’s Pushcart Nominated poem “Suite for Red River Gorge” at this link.

National Poetry Month events

This Thursday, April 17, is the birthday of my sister-in-law of, can it be?, about 50 years. Happy birthday, Pete!

But it is also the Academy of American Poets’ Poem in your Pocket Day!

Celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

The site has suggestions for celebrating the day and also a selection of pocket-sized poems you can print out and share.

Or, if you’re more technology minded, you can carry Mobile Poets on your pocket communicator of choice.

April 17 is also the date for Hazard Community and Technical College’s Evening with Poets, hosted by Jim Webb. This year’s featured poet is Diane Gilliam Fisher. Readings begin at 6:30 in the Stephens Library. Admission is free!

The 12th annual HCTC Spring Writers Conference is set for April 18, 10:00 to 4:30. This FREE writers conference will feature workshops by Crystal Wilkinson, Gurney Normal, and Diane Gilliam Fisher.

At the other end of the state, Kentucky Writers Conference 2008 returns to Bowling Green for it’s fifth year on April 17 and 18. Presenters include George Ella Lyon, Richard Taylor, Lynnell Edwards, and John Guzlowski (about whom more later).

The 10th annual Southern Kentucky Bookfest will be held on Saturday April 19 at the Sloan Convention in Bowling Green. My friend Georgia Green Stamper, author of You Can Go Anywhere, will be there along with other local notables, including Kentucky Poet Laureate Jane Gentry, former Kentucy Poet Laureate Richard Taylor, along with Leatha Kendrick, Fred Smock, George Ella Lyon, Lynnell Edwards, and some folks who write stuff beside poetry. Full list of authors here.

You can find links to web pages for these and many other Kentucky writers on my Ky’s Writers page.

In case you didn’t get signed up, here are the archives for Knopf’s Poem-a-Day 2008

And don’t forget Dead Mule’s Poets on the Odds.