Poetry – Page 6 – Denton Loving

Keegan Lester’s “A Psalm against J.D. Vance”

December 10, 2017 Denton Loving1 Comment

I’ve written and spoken much about my disgust for media darling J.D. Vance and his book, Hillbilly Elegy. If you don’t already know my position, you can check out my review of the book in issue #189 of Meredith Sue Willis’s Books for Readers. There have been far more articulate arguments against Vance’s terrible book, but up until now, most of those responses have been in the form of reviews and op-eds.

I was excited to discover that Keegan Lester responded in a beautiful poem, published recently online at Anastamos and well worth the read.

A Psalm against J.D. Vance by Keegan Lester

Spill a little lighting for Ryan & Marcus, Natalie, &
my great grandfather. Spill

a little lightning for Tom & Jason & Joe & Teresa.
Graveyards round here full

of people cause there’s a thousand ways into the mine,
a thousand ways to be

killed in the mine, cause the American coal miner
can only be seen in light

when they’re dead. The only time the media has a big interest
is the day after & one day a hundred years will pass

& they wont even love nature anymore,
& they will say what we did to the natives was genocide

& they will say what we did to those cities was apartheid
& they will say what we did to Appalachia was colonialism,

we treated them as if not our people, but things
to bring ore up out of a mountain,

& one day they will use the word slave
& one day they will let Appalachian children speak for themselves

& one day they will let Appalachian children into colleges
& not ask them to denounce the place they came from

their culture, their religion, their hands,
& one day they will let Appalachian children speak

& the Appalachian children will say you can’t lose but so much blood,
then the body

shutting down; it was cheaper to destroy a mountain
than put up a man to work underground,

my brother’s body mangled in such a way,
every bone crushed, I could not recognize him,

that’s what they gave us back
of the miners up at Upper Big Branch,

Don Blankenship’s employees, they were our friends, beneath the surface.
They were brave men at work.

Jeanne Bryner’s “Breach Calf”

March 7, 2017 Denton Loving1 Comment

Years ago, when I was a student at The Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers Workshop, I met Jeanne Bryner. We became instant friends, bonding over poems written about cows and calves, both of us having lived on or near cattle farms for much of our lives. Jeanne is an award winning poet, fiction writer and playwright. She was born in Appalachia and grew up near Warren, Ohio. She has a beautiful new book (her 7th) called Both Shoes Off, published by Bottom Dog Press. The book is filled with many wonderful poems, but here is one of my favorites from this new collection:

Breach Calf by Jeanne Bryner

The calf’s hind feet point to barn rafters.
Inside his mama, he dreams a baby brother,

how they sit the moon’s lap for a story.
Climbing down, he does a somersault, lands wrong.

And now, this farmer, his gloved arm pushes him
back and back and back, his mama strains at her plow.

Then, other rough men, special chains, metal wrapped
just below his knees, not wanting a cripple,

a calf who cannot run or play. Mama’s fresh blood,
pain’s awful hands squeeze, no breath for his whistle.

The beautiful boy asleep in clean straw,
but all in the manger are still,

save the bawling mother
washing her son, calling his name to the moon.

Alison Stine’s “Ohio Violence” and “On Poverty”

January 11, 2017 Denton LovingLeave a comment

Recently my friend William Kelley Woolfitt sent me an essay he thought I should see: Alison Stine’s “On Poverty” at The Kenyon Review. This essay was a response to an essay by Claire Vaye Watkins’ called “On Pandering.” Watkins’ essay received a lot of attention in literary circles, and there were many responses. But Alison Stine’s response is the best I have seen, and I wish more people would read it.

Earlier this week, I railed about J. D. Vance’s ignorant and stumbling assessment of Appalachia, the Rust Belt and the wider world in his poorly named memoir Hillbilly Elegy. One of my chief complaints about the book is that Vance addresses shockingly little about class structures and dynamics. Stine says infinitely more in her short essay than Vance says in his entire book.

alison-stine-ohio-violence

When I asked William to tell me more about Stine, he recommended her poetry collection, Ohio Violence, which I read this week and which I highly recommend. Ohio Violence was the 2008 winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, and she’s written three books since it. Stine’s website links to a number of individual poems and essays, but here is one from Ohio Violence that I especially like. This poem, “When I Taught Mary to Eat Avacado,” is also found at Verse Daily. I hope you’ll enjoy her work as much as I do.

When I Taught Mary to Eat Avacado

She didn’t understand.

You couldn’t cut straight through with the big knife
because of the pit, or heart, or stone.

We gave it many names,

and when it was revealed, bone-shade,
heavy-bottomed, she wanted to keep it.

She washed it, and the skin

dried and crackled, lost shards. I taught her to salt
the pebbled rim, and dig with the tip

of a spoon, which is like a knife.

The flesh curl surprises, but it’s a taste you’ll miss.
When she stole the story I told then,

how the Aztecs locked up virgins

during the avocado harvest, how this was repeated
to others in her own language,

I knew we were bound to take

what we could from each other and go.
I didn’t tell her what the name

for avocado meant, its connection

to the male body, which she wanted no part of,
which I am now a part of.

Perhaps that is the end

of the story, his flesh in my mouth. Perhaps
the women were not locked up,

but went, willing.

My 2016 Reading List

December 31, 2016 Denton LovingLeave a comment

In regards to reading, I had two goals this year. Actually, I’m going to refer to them as one goal and one hope.

The goal was to read one Shakespeare play each month. The few I had read before this year were school assignments, which I mostly wasn’t prepared to read and didn’t get much out of. I got a bit behind during the fall semester, but I managed to catch up just this week in order to complete my goal.

My hope was to read 100 books this year. Why 100? I don’t know. It’s a fairly arbitrary number, but it’s nice and round, and I thought this was the year that I could do it. Unfortunately, I’m a bit short, clocking in at only 91 books read this year (full list below). I admit that almost half of those books were poetry books, which means that many were a bit short. Still, 91 is a respectable number, or so I’m telling myself.

Here’s the full list. FYI, a few of these books are unpublished manuscripts. You won’t find them for purchase yet, but I hope you’ll find them one day soon.

Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
Diane Cook – Man V. Nature
Steven Pressfield – The War of Art
David Daniel – Seven-Star Bird
Charles Dodd White & Larry Smith – Appalachia Now
William Trent Pancoast – Valley Real Estate
William Shakespeare – Othello
William Kelley Woolfitt – Beauty Strip
William Kelley Woolfitt – Charles of the Desert
Richie Hofmann – Second Empire
Jill McCorkle – Creatures of Habit
Junot Diaz – The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Michael Ondaatje – Divisadero
William Shakespeare – The First Part of Henry VI
Jeremy Jones – Bearwallow
Elijah Burrell – The Skin of the River
William Shakespeare – The Second Part of Henry VI
Wesley Browne – Slice
Pauletta Hansel – The Lives We Live in Houses
Alex Taylor – The Name of the Nearest River
Major Jackson – Holding Company
Kyle McCord – You Are Indeed an Elk, But This is Not the Forest You Were Born to Graze
Jodi Lynn Anderson – Tiger Lily
Brent Martin – Hunting for Camellias at Horseshoe Bend
William Shakespeare – The Third Part of Henry VI
Robert Zubrin – The Case for Mars
Rose McLarney – The Always Broken Plates of Mountains
Rose McLarney – Its Day Being Gone
Lee Smith – Cakewalk
Amy Willoughby-Burle – Out Across the Nowhere
Darnell Arnoult – Galaxie Wagon
William Shakespeare – Richard III
Pasture Art – Marlin Barton
Barrett Warner – Why is it so hard to kill You?
New Stories from the South 2008 – ZZ Packer
A Fox Appears – Jennifer Stewart-Miller
Larry Brown – Joe (June)
Bob Shachohis – The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
Geoff Dyer – Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It
Theodore Wheeler – Bad Faith
Joanne Proulx – We All Love the Beautiful Girls
William Shakespeare – The Tempest
Ross Gay – Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Jim Elledge – Tapping My Arm for a Vein
William Shakespeare – Two Gentleman of Verona
Keith Stewart – Bernadette Peters Hates Me
Cassie Pruyn – Lena
Nathan Hill – The Nix
Erica Anderson-Senter – Seven Days Now
J.K. Daniels – Wedding Pulls
Sue Weaver Dunlap – Knead
Lauren K. Alleyne – Difficult Fruit
Major Jackson – Hoops
Brandon Courtney – Rooms for Rent in the Burning City
Henry Real Bird – Horse Tacks
Jen Leija – Good Bones
William Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Lyrae Van Clief-Stafanon – Open Interval
Ron Houchin – Death and the River
David Armand – My Mother’s House
William Shakespeare – The Merry Wives of Windsor
Thomas Rain Crowe – Radiogenesis
Dorianne Laux – The Book of Men
Mark Eisner – The Essential Neruda – Selected Poems
Richard Hague – Possible Debris
Nathalie Handal – Poet in Andalucia
Saeed Jones – Prelude to Bruise
Joseph Bathanti – Anson County
Jim Minick – Burning Heaven
Jim Harrison – Letters to Yesenin
Tim Peeler – Fresh Horses
Mark Wagenaar – Body Distances
Richard Hague – Alive in Hard Country
Connie Jordan Green – Darwin’s Breath
Grace Paley – Later the Same Day
William Shakespeare – Measure for Measure
TJ Jarrett – Zion
Carrie Mullins – Night Garden
William Shakespeare – Comedy of Errors
William Shakespeare – Love’s Labour’s Lost
-91. (11 poetry manuscripts I read for a contest)

I’d love to know what you read this year. If you don’t want to include your full list, what were your favorite books of 2016?

Category: Poetry

Recommended Reading 12/12/2017

Keegan Lester’s “A Psalm against J.D. Vance”

Recommended Reading 10/9/2017

Recommended Reading 8/4/2017

Jeanne Bryner’s “Breach Calf”

Recommended Reading 2/26/2017

Recommended Reading 1/16/2017

Alison Stine’s “Ohio Violence” and “On Poverty”

Recommended Reading 1/4/2017

My 2016 Reading List