Geographical/environmental influences

[hmmnmm]

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[WickedEve]

Is the written voice influenced by where you live and the folks around you? Well, sure.

From a small town, southern poet:

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The Greens of Swallow Glen

Otis and Blue
Present:
Oh, Sweetdaddy,
How Come She Bury You in that Hole?


Close them eyes, Blue,
and you'll see.
They is broodin' clouds
curlin' ugly.

Runt creatures curl
and they's tender.
But those be horribles
up there, gathered
top of your head.

Lightnin's wily, you know,
strikin' behind trees
so as to spy her scratchin'
some bad dirt's itch,
while rain--fidgety fingers--
drums along his corpsy spine.

She had scooped up a fine chaw
from downtown dusty walks.
Crude woman. Folks' genteel shoes
stomped to the other side
away from her slick aim.

Then thunder came with night.
Sounded like wildens in the sky,
with a little grumble below,
rumblin' up from Sweetdaddy.

Saucer them eyes, Blue.
This be where she opened the earth,
a good-sized gash just under her pawpaw tree.
Sweetdaddy loved him some pawpaws.
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I write the way I talk, the way I hear folks around here speak. This poem is a bit over the top, of course. The poem is based on fact, which makes it a bit more interesting.

 

[Angeline]

Or a Jersey girl.
*********************************

Boardwalk Life

Wildwood is wild,
a honky-tonk wood strip
that sizzles and smells
like fried onions and beer.

It sounds like Bruce there,
like Love to Love you disco,
and oldies cranked blasting
from tiny smoky bars
filled with slick tan bodies
moving over gritty floors.

Here's how it works:

You get yourself a room
at the rooming house
with the other hormones
and a job on the boards.
Maybe you run the Swiss Bob
or the Round-up, maybe
you wait tables at some trap
where the tips suck,
and Chuck the manager
always brushes by
too close with his palms out,
and Lonzo the cook
calls you Stuff.

Hey Stuff! Veal Parm!

He sneaks you shrimps
and bites of steak
because you're young
and cute, and he
hates Chuck, too.

Split shift is best.
It's a no sleep gig,
mostly catch a few
hours on the beach,
while you broil
the afternoons away
between shifts.

Later you hit the bars
in droves with other
summer trash girls
in cutoffs and gold hoops
and young turks
in open shirts.

Then you Turn the Beat
Around and dance
in your hot beach skin,
wailing with the crowd,
long neck in one hand,
and your fist raised.

You pump up the night beat
to local bands full of wiseguy
brooding South Side boys,
tough-eyed, soft-mouthed.

And it's bread and circuses,
music, clink, and laughter,
quieting only when Sharkey
that asshole starts screaming
at his very pregnant teenaged
wife that he wants her
to fucking dance now damnit,
but she cries and you feel sick,
so you leave.

You walk on the sand
barefoot, it smells clean
here where the waves
crash like life contracting,
and the rolls of water
are punctuated by slurps
and sighs of underboard
sex, 4 AM.

It all feels so urgent,
so desparate, this great
suffocating need, and you
know then this is why
we run, this is why
we leave these ticky-tacky
New Jersey towns.

Because the sky is empty,
save for the stars,
but they're as far away
from the crush
of this carnival life
as you yearn to be.
************************************

My mid-Atlantic coastal roots are tangled all through my poems.

 

[Tathagata]

Squat box truck
with art deco lettering
and a bell that's as bent and twisted
as the driver

old rosie
he's been around since christ was a choir boy
horse leather face
creased like a dry river bed
and one eye squeezed shut
" he got lime in it"
that's the rumor
and we are all careful when playing on the football field
don't want to end up like Rosie

a dense monkey of a man
ears jut out like mug handles
under a sweat stained grey cap
no ones ever seen him without it
and there's something obscene
about the way he jingles his hands in his apron
while making change

sometimes we hand him slugs
and grab the ice cream and run
knowing he can't catch us
the older boys hop on his truck
he never goes fast
and hitch a ride all over Saugus

but what always amazed me
is that no matter what you asked for
he'd open the door
stick his arm in
and pull it out
first try every time
like a wizard

italian ice, strawberry shortcake
push ups and hoodsies
chocolate éclairs and frozen charleston chews
ice cream sandwiches and root beer popsicles
so much happiness
and joy
dispensed
by the unsmiling troll
with the squinty eye

 

[hmmnmm]

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[Sara Crewe]

My favourite place in the world:

Cow River Beach

I guess the cows once drank
from the fresh water that drains
down the brackish bed into the sea.
I have never seen a cow
here but tonight the sea trout
are running. Funny to say
they’re running when they have fins
for feet and maybe it’s egocentric
of me to even compare. Two fools
wander by and see only a meal
where I see a miracle. They end up
on their asses as a living fountain
worth a penny not for a wish but a laugh
at their expense. Around them the fish flail
and spray white splashes across the sand
banks and when I squint to decrease the scale
this could be the Rio Grande full of rapids.
But I have never been to Texas
and probably look stupid
in a cowboy hat. On the fallen log
that bridges the two sides of the beach
my eyes follow the fish as they smash
scales against river rocks for the last ten feet
before they are free of the shallows
and swim into the mouth of the ocean
where they will try for the rest
of their lives not to be swallowed.



****************

It ends in my poems all the time. It's like a stray cat that followed me to my new house. He still meows every morning at the door and I let him in...

 

[Angeline]

I grew up in the east, some southern edges, some midwest borders, so childhood was filled with the humidity, the green, the stories, the character. I lived in a Texas city, north central Texas, which geographically speaking, is fairly plain. Sweltering heat, unlike what they think here in the west, where I am and have been some time. It's harder here. Hard rocks, hard weeds, hard ground. Low humidity, they have to irrigate if they want to grow anything to eat, to sell, anything green and pretty to look at.

I miss southern cooking, yankee cooking, all the dialects, practically from county to county. I miss lightning bugs, richness in general. But here I love the expanses, the wildness. I pretty much keep to myself here, which I don't mind, find other sources. Socially I do not at all fit in here, but I feel as though the river and the crystal clear night stars speak, we commune, somehow. My wife says I and we should get out more and if we were someplace more easterly or southerly, I'd probably agree.

What this has to do with written voice? I was getting to a point, but it got lost somewhere.

I think you're trying to say that where we've been, the places we've considered "home" comes through in our writing. All of us who've posted in your thread show this to be true.

I've lived in northern Maine for over three years now and the influence on my poetry is unmistakable, at least to me. I write about snow a lot now, and I often feel the leaden, desolate quality of Maine winter slips into my writing. Now it's very pretty here, green and flowery, thick pines and incredible cornflower blue skies. But in just a few months everything will turn gray and a million shades of white. I never thought there could be shades of white until I lived in Maine.

But I grew up in New Jersey and most of my family is from New York City. Those influences are there, too, as evidenced in the poem I posted. Less so now, but I still think of the city as home. Not here. There.

 

[Angeline]

Squat box truck
with art deco lettering
and a bell that's as bent and twisted
as the driver

old rosie
he's been around since christ was a choir boy
horse leather face
creased like a dry river bed
and one eye squeezed shut
" he got lime in it"
that's the rumor
and we are all careful when playing on the football field
don't want to end up like Rosie

a dense monkey of a man
ears jut out like mug handles
under a sweat stained grey cap
no ones ever seen him without it
and there's something obscene
about the way he jingles his hands in his apron
while making change

sometimes we hand him slugs
and grab the ice cream and run
knowing he can't catch us
the older boys hop on his truck
he never goes fast
and hitch a ride all over Saugus

but what always amazed me
is that no matter what you asked for
he'd open the door
stick his arm in
and pull it out
first try every time
like a wizard

italian ice, strawberry shortcake
push ups and hoodsies
chocolate éclairs and frozen charleston chews
ice cream sandwiches and root beer popsicles
so much happiness
and joy
dispensed
by the unsmiling troll
with the squinty eye

I've loved this poem since the first time I read it. You make me miss real Italian Ice. But I'll have it soon--that and real pizza.

You make me remember the thousands (seems like) of root beer popsicles I split with my sister.

 

[hmmnmm]

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[Angeline]

I would love to be on a coast, just about any coast. The wife and I just got hooked on yahtzee and I kept thinking that we should be on the oregon coast. Needs to be an ocean nearby if you're playing yahtzee. Wonder why?

To be specific this western town is in Idaho. The natural visual treats delight the eyes and feed the soul, no matter which direction you look. Mountain ranges that hosted snow until just about a month ago. May and June, the winter finally sets the citizens free, the bright intense july and early august heat yet to invade. More than one who I've showed my photos to comment on the light, which I don't know how to describe at the moment.

But the food and the local dialect is, to be generous, a bit bland. I miss all the variety farther east and south. Not to mention the music, all the blends and cross-pollinations. They have a surprisingly decent library here but no bookstore. Really, no bookstore.

How this applies to the written voice, I suppose it has to do with recurrent observations that I wander or overwrite or confuse some readers. But it's easy to let the eye wander here, or to go inside the mind, hard to focus on one train of thought and maintain it without distractive deviations. And I can't help wonder if a bit of humid air would help hold down the tendency to split off into several tangents. Or if a coast might lend some sort of constancy, or even a border.

Or maybe these are just lazy excuses?

No bookstore is a bad sign for a town. That's when you thank god for amazon.

 

[Sara Crewe]

No bookstore is a bad sign for a town. That's when you thank god for amazon.

I'm with Ange. That would be like livin' in Hell for me. Where would I go to waste time and hide from the real world?


Amazon is good but then you have to wait. I am not so good at the waitin' thing.

 

[hmmnmm]

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[Sara Crewe]

Can't have every thing?

Nope. You can't.

Maybe you were meant to open their bookstore and write for the paper. To be the new voice on the scene.

 

[hmmnmm]

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[MungoParkIII]

No bookstore is a bad sign for a town. That's when you thank god for amazon.

Of course there are a lot of places where they are losing the bookstores because of Amazon and other dot.com booksellers.

 

[hmmnmm]

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[Angeline]

Of course there are a lot of places where they are losing the bookstores because of Amazon and other dot.com booksellers.

This is true, and I have mixed feelings about shopping for books online myself, though I love being able to browse such a large selection and read reviews. But towns without bookstores are generally places where most people aren't readers. If I were our friend hmmmnmmm, I'd be a bit perturbed by that.

 

[hmmnmm]

[-------

 

[WickedEve]

No bookstore is a bad sign for a town. That's when you thank god for amazon.

What's a bookstore. We don't have one but we do have a hunting supply store.

Kill a deer, save a tree.

 

[hmmnmm]

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[WickedEve]

We have a liquor store.

I'm greenish with envy. You must be from the big city.

 

[Angeline]

What's a bookstore. We don't have one but we do have a hunting supply store.

Kill a deer, save a tree.

We have lots of bookstores, but this being northern Maine, we have lots of hunting and gun stores, too. People actually hunt moose up here. Yikes!

 

[hmmnmm]

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[WickedEve]

We also have a bridge.

You're just rubbing it in now.

 

[hmmnmm]

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