Willie James King is a masterful poet-physician, environmentalist, and surgeon-priest. He attends to the ills that befall the bonehouse of the body in which we live and recognizes that it is at once the mortal frame, our spiritual being, the work we do, and the earth we habit. The House in the Heart is a potent poetic prescription that helps right wrong. Words may save us, even from ourselves.
One notable malaise that King investigates is racial discrimination. In “Old Cahawba” the auction block at the first Capital of Alabama stands “undefiled by lichen and time,” a reminder of travails that still brood and breed a terrible wrong. King writes about “growing up Black in Alabama when most men were “too frightened to defend their own families, where even white children addressed eighty-year old men as ‘Boy!’” Not just the elderly, but youth are also disaffected. King says his “bone-hearted brother” ran away to Racine, Wisconsin “seeking another place because of his color.”
The earth is our human body, dust to dust, and King sees that the health of our planet is intricately related to our fundamental selves. It likewise has suffered, endured high winds, squalls, torrents, and drought that stunts even the growth of Kudzu.
King renders the interconnectedness of the environment, individuals, and the situations that create lasting scars. Many poignant poems in the book record family history. As philosopher Susan Bordo points out: “the body can never be regarded merely as a site of quantifiable processes that can be assessed objectively, but must be treated as invested with personal meaning.” In “I Have Learned,” King says his mother shoved him against a “cast-iron wood-burning stove,” telling him that he was like his father, this son who was made to swear that he would never drink whiskey, even as his father finally drank himself to death.
With keen awareness that language is a way human beings confront cultural [dis]ease, King shows that words possess the capacity to heal and afford happiness. He says that sometimes his soul answers when he speaks, else he “couldn’t hover in this deep lull of love, sweet hull of happiness [his] body calls home.” Willie King writes with assurance, with sensitivity, courage, and resolve. His book of poetry, with a splendid introduction by Cathy Smith Bowers, is one every humanitarian, and especially every poet, every writer, should display prominently on their library shelf.
A Posturing Of Fools
by Brewster Milton Robertson
River City Publishing
$27.95 hardcover
reviewed by Sue Walker
Brewster Milton Robertson’s latest novel, A Posturing of Fools is a “class” act that explores representations of class as opposed to snobbism. In the words of Russell Lynes which Robertson quotes, “The true snob never rests [...] there are always [...] more and more people to look down upon.”
Like F. Scott Fitzgerald with whom he has been compared, Robertson seamlessly examines the Greenbrier “smart set,” those who possess power and wealth, or want to, those who define themselves in terms of their associates, those who are the beautiful and potentially damned. Logan Baird explains to his friend John Silver upon receiving orders to ship home to the states after serving in Bosnia, “John Paul, ol’ buddy, did I ever tell you about the Greenbrier? It’s the spa to end all spas. It’s the most elegant place in the whole [...] universe. The créme de la créme,” and John Paul replies, “Touch of class, Logan ... real touch of class.”
A touch of class in its own right, Robertson’s novel is an incredible read. There is intrigue, mystery, and romance. What does the unopened letter that Baird’s wife Rose hands him as he leaves for the Greenbrier contain? How will it alter his life? Readers who groove on golf, who love the game and heroes like “Slammin’ Sammy Snead,” will find the game on his home course irresistible. Baird says that he took his six-year-old son “to marvel at this remarkable man—now the Greenbrier’s Golf Professional Emeritus”—who at eighty could still score in the low seventies. Autographing Baird’s press pass for the child,” Snead said “Tell yo’ Poppa to write something nice about me,” and Robertson has done just that, put Slammin’ Sammy on the links again with the thrill that comes with the game.
Robertson, once a pharmaceutical rep himself, writes with authority of the West Virginia State Medical Association’s annual meeting that takes place at the Greenbrier in the Allegheny Mountains of White Sulphur Springs. He shows just what it means to be involved in the release a mega-billion-dollar drug, to live life in a fast lane, in a push to achieve status, to move up to a better job, and to acquire a new home and more creature comforts, but does it offer a better life and a more fulfilling marital relationship? Baird wonders if “the system—or most aptly the nonsystem we variously call quality or worth or style or good taste” is class at all. “Like jazz, true class is an abstraction.” He asks himself what Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, the famous jazz trumpeter would say about class, about a posturing fool of a boss who equates success with having a Rolex watch, luggage with Hartmann inscribed on it, and owning proper shirts with impressive logos, Pebble Beach and Cypress point, all Chemise Lacoste. “Ah man,” he imagines Satch saying, “Class ain’t got nuthing’ to do with money. You either got it or you ain’t.”
Well, Brewster Milton Robertson knows about “Class,” indeed is CLASS. He is an artist who knows, to borrow Jeanette Winterson’s words from her essay “Imagination and Reality”(in McLaughlin and Coleman’s Everyday Theory) that “the reality of art is the reality of the imagination.” She might well have been describing Robertson when she said of nature that it is, in essence, “one’s birth, characteristics, and condition, “one’s nativity, astrology, biology, physiognomy, geography, cartography, spirituality, sexuality, mentality, corporeal, intellectual, emotional, and imaginative self. It is the artist’s self, “every self and the Self of the world,” (Everyday Theory 254) , that of the Greenbrier, Robertson’s astute and masterful creation.
Tales from Blue Springs: The Hatchet Woman
by R Garth
Elk River Review Press and Arkadelphia 13
$12.95 paperback
reviewed by E. M. Jenner, Gisbon, Australia
Readers of this story will in turn be fascinated, saddened and absorbed, but never bored.
Those who approach this 123-page book seeking a quick, relaxing read may find it sometimes difficult to understand and its dark side disturbing. The real seeker will, however, discover much more. Do yourself, and the author, a favor by REALLY reading the book.
Before you commence turning its pages – and please begin at the beginning! –try to read through the eyes of your soul, your third eye. Take the blinkers off any preconceived ideas. This is not a book for Mills and Boon adherents!
The Hatchet Woman’s sad story reminds us that immense tragedy is usually the genesis of all scars – both physical and emotional - and if we are to survive in a superficial, often uncaring and materialistic world, we must carry a “hatchet” to deal with them. Covering ourselves in “mud” can also be useful for survival. The grotesquely-hanging eyeball, ever looking downwards, sees the dirt but must aim the “good” eye upwards to observe the beauty of the stars.
“The Woman at the Well” may cause us to reflect on the Bible story and Jesus’ admonishment to the unsympathetic crowd – “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
R Garth’s autobiographical snippets give us some insights into his own journey of personal discovery, his efforts of survival and eventual achievement. Those of us whose parents have died also relate to the pain he still experiences at this loss. In addition, we learn a little about his personal family relationships.
Whatever decision you arrive at after “digesting” this book, all readers will compliment the author on his intimate writing style, his intelligence, occasional self-deprecating humor, and deep insights into the human character.
I’m glad he concludes the book with the words “to be continued” as we’d like to read more “Tales from Blue Springs”, a little more about some of the characters including the “sweet girl” who had given him flute lessons in Melbourne.
Hopefully, the story will be continued ….
Walking Wounded
by Jimmy Carl Harris
Iris Press
$16.00 paperback
reviewed by Sue Walker
To read Jimmy Carl Harris’s collection of twelve stories, Walking Wounded, is to think of Flannery O’Connor’s “Christ-haunted Protestant South,” for Harris has the same knack for telling powerful tales of truth and terror, stories about the “walking wounded” who are flawed and in need of grace. As O’Connor says: “When the poor hold sacred history in common, they have concrete ties to the universal and the holy which allow the meaning of their every action to be heightened and see under the aspect of eternity” – or as Harris puts it: “Church doors are open to saints and sinners alike.”
Jimmy Carl Harris possesses an astute sense of story telling. His characterizations are masterful and his dialogue sure. He writes not of aristocrats who are accustomed to privilege; instead he writes of veterans, trailer dwellers, so-called loose women, those at war with themselves and others fighting battles that lie beyond easy comprehension. With such stark and memorable lines as: “Blind girls’eyes make tears just like normal girls” in the story “Dark Dancing,” Harris makes the reader see up close and personal, feel at-home where chickens roost, in places where there are “malfunction Junctions” that may “have some permanent caustic effect on the brain and on the soul.”
Harris, a retired Marine Corps Sergeant Major who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, writes of war and of characters who return home “to figure out life,” his stories are steeped in Alabama. He creates a mythical Nall County, but also mentions real places such as Birmingham, the University of Alabama, and Tuscaloosa. Place is an important element in defining who the characters are in the coal mines and cotton fields where “potatoes and onions frying smell almost as good as squirrel and dumplings.” Harris understands human nature even when, even while, he paints the dark underbelly of sin with a wide brush. It may be said that Jimmy Carl Harris writes in the best tradition of the Southern grotesque. In Walking Wounded, he is able to step into the shoes of such writers as Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Melinda Haynes, and fill them with pride.
Seven Laurels
by Linda Busby Parker
Southeast Missouri Press
$35.00 hardcover, $19.00 paperback
reviewed by Sue Walker
“BEAUTIFUL,” Professor Rimes whispers in response to the piano performance
of his protégé, Albert Laurel McAtee. This—and the words in which Brewster, the boy’s father, says that his son’s playing of the third movement of a Beethoven sonata is about “love, bigger than a man’s own heart, and the purity of that love [...] expressing truth so deep it was holy truth [...]—form an apt description of Linda Busby Parker’s powerfully rendered novel, Seven Laurels.
It is not surprising that this novel, earlier called “The Sums of August” won the prestigious James Jones First Novel Fellowship (her manuscript chosen out of 665 submissions to the contest). Describing the book, Professor Michael Lennon of Wilkes University, said “[i]t was one of the most moving stories seen in the ten years of the Jones Fellowship competition.
To speak of the South is to speak of the power of owning property, of owning land. This ownership is as important as characterization, especially in Seven Laurels, for it is the quest for land that leads to the death of Laurel McAtee. The novel begins with the lines:
A boy becomes a man when he has his own house—leased or paying notes doesn’t matter: the tangible property anchors one corner of manhood. Even heaven is defined by property—in my father’s house are many mansions When he was a boy, his father Tom took Brewster’s small hand in his own and forced it to rub the old wound, thick as molten plastic. ‘This house cost me,’ he said . . .
The novel, in short, is what this owning costs. Yet, one has only to read the struggle of African-American, Brewster McAtee, to realize that the novel has every ingredient that makes for superb fiction. The characterization is strong and sure, the writing itself, forceful and musical. Perhaps there is no author who can make music with words, make the rendering come alive, verberate and reverberate the soulful South better than Linda Parker. One passage that aptly delineates Brewster McAttee and conjoins music and characterization is the piano piece played by Brewster’s son, Laurel:
It had big sounds, big chords, and Laurel used his upper body to create
the storm raging in the ocean outside the tiny lighthouse that stood on narrow legs in the tumultuous waves. To Brewster, this piece was the story of a lone man who survived a potent storm in the dark of night, a great-hearted man who held on through the wind and the darkness. (238)
The music and the characterization become one: the potent storm that rages outside and the ability of a black man to survive. The story focuses on this man, Brewster McAtee, an Afro-American citizen of Low Ridge, Alabama, whose love of family and land transcend the tragic deaths of TeeBoy, his brother, and that of his son, Laurel.
The novel skillfully reflects the time when the Civil Rights movement was creating unrest in Alabama and Mississippi. It takes place in 1956, the year following the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till and the arrest of Rosa Parks who. Refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. One of the many strengths of Parker’s novel is her ability to deftly render violence, indeed murder, with a grace that transcends horror. Her book is an important cultural study that reaffirms the complexities of a South that is more than merely myth, but a South that struggles to redeem the facts of its profound and wrenching change through faith and abiding love.
Collage: A Tribute to Steven Owen Bailey
edited by J. William Chambers
Negative Capability Press
$22.00 paperback
reviewed by Kennette Harrison
Most of us dwell in houses—either physical or emotional—that are designed by arrivals and departures, by greetings and goodbyes. We rearrange the space left by loss with varying degrees of success, sometimes fleeing temporarily before we can return, perhaps never to feel at home again, but to become designers of our own peace and comfort through necessity. Our trial and error can be very public or extraordinarily private. We can dance the sad dance of the maudlin or waltz away in the garish. If, however, we are blessed with the wisdom of experience, an eye for beauty, and a life gifted with the mysteries and magic of exquisite pain that can only be balanced by some act of great courage demanding our best talents--our deepest passions--then we can discover an energy that astonishes us in its intensity. We can come unexpectedly upon a purpose that allows the unfamiliar to settle in like a favorite chair that fits our sore bones so perfectly we will be soothed in our sadness.
The intensity of J. William Chambers as author and editor in Collage: A Tribute to Steven Owen Bailey derives from that kind of energy and purpose. Chambers’ loss of a beloved friend who was a designer and artist and with whom Chambers made their Athens, Alabama, home a remarkable, welcoming dwelling place. Fortunate visitors found the intriguing interior design and garden surrounds both peaceful and captivating. The beautiful cover of the book, bordered in vibrant green, is a picture collage, front and back that Steve created in 2000. Like inquisitive black and white Muffin-Cat, who strolls through the picture garden unaware of the expert design, and with no sense of its formal plan, anyone similarly under the garden’s spell would discover only a natural and gentle insistence that the entranced wanderer stop and really see the iridescence of a ruby-throated hummingbird, smell the varieties of mint, meditate peacefully by the koi pond, become tangled in the muscadine vines, and feel riotously happy in its plethora of fragrance and color. Cover and content combine to create an inexplicable collaboration between Chambers and Bailey that admits readers not only into a world of culture and beauty, but also into an exceptional friendship.
Having first met Steve Bailey, I commented to fellow Alabama poet Bonnie Roberts about his angelic quality. I did not know that this had been said of Steve from his youth and throughout a life that shimmered with an inner light and early wisdom, both sometimes seen in singular individuals who from childhood seem to cope with poverty and illness, with struggle and disappointment in a distinctive and artful way that lifts them to a plane many especially spiritual individuals achieve only after long years of seeking. Steve was denied those long years by his early departure from this earth, but he never lost the quality that my friend confirmed she, too, recognized in him.
Books of tribute to lost friends abound, and they deserve respect often solely for the courage of authors who are writing their way through profound grief. What makes Collage outstanding is that it sings with the lyricism Chambers possesses naturally, once employed expertly as music critic for the Huntsville Times in Alabama for seventeen years. His sense of melody and phrase knits together the art and architectural excellence of Steve Bailey. The pebble by pebble garden path of Chamber’s refined wordsmithing leads us through a varied and successful celebration of Steve Bailey’s life, one that is not simply an expected elevation of a friend who has left this mortal world, but a sauntering through a life that illumines us as readers because of the life the book takes on. Just as the most comfortable homes and most charming gardens invite and surprise, Collage is truly a tribute because of the seemingly impossible collaboration between Chambers and Bailey. It is to the credit of Alabama’s Poet Laureate Sue Walker that she chose to publish this physically beautiful and superbly crafted and sequenced book through her distinguished press Negative Capability.
The unusual mixture of Chambers’ series of connected poems, with his always honed and musical use of language; the innocence of a young Steve Bailey’s personal journal entries; poignant poems by Steve’s family members and friends; and the final individual poems by Chambers flow in the reader’s mind long after the book has been closed. The stream of solace, the visible creek where rose petals and ashes swirl always down a current of intermingled grief and beauty, sings in the reader’s ear.
Collage has a list of contributors that includes well-known poets, as well as people unfamiliar to literary Alabama, but who cared enough for Steve to write touching and intimately personal poems of a quality that perhaps amazed even them. To those who knew Steve, this is not a surprise. He had an ability to inspire best efforts in others. That Chambers is able to reveal so much about another person and about himself in such an accomplished way, so that readers can recognize both the ashes of loss and the petals of life, makes this life collage of an extraordinary young man, lost so young, not simply a tragedy, but also a triumph of spirit on Steve’s part, and a masterly book that highlights Chambers’ personal journey across the lonely and arid landscape of grief and through the familiar gate of a changed, but still living garden of recovery.
Readers leave Collage: A Tribute to Steven Owen Bailey recognizing, and perhaps better appreciating the beloved friendships in their own lives, but perhaps not recognizing Chambers’ seamless editorship of the printed word that led them through a life much as the black and white cat on its cover, that wandered at first inquisitively and innocently into the profusion of color in life’s palette and found itself leaping, stopping, perhaps napping securely, and waking to explore again. How exceptional to find a book that courageously and effectively invites readers into a world where sorrow and joy tangle like the rose and the thorn, but never too sharply that there is not a safe place to curl in the sun and contemplate the gift of so rare a melding of tribute and art.
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