The Southern Review articles from January 1994

The Southern Review archives from January 1994

An interview with Madison Smartt Bell. (author of southern fiction) (Interview)
January 1, 1994... This Interview Took Place in August 1992 at Madison Smartt Bell's home in Baltimore, Maryland. Our conversation focused on the southernness of Bell's fiction, the influence of the Fugitives/Agrarians on his work, and the future of southern...

The English pupil. (short story)
January 1, 1994... OUTSIDE UPPSALA, on a late December afternoon in 1777, a figure tucked in a small sleigh ordered his coachman to keep driving. "Hammarby," he said. "Please." The words were cracked, almost unintelligible. The coachman was afraid. At...

The person I have mostly become. (short story)
January 1, 1994... Fridays my mother cleans at the Wiltons', and last week she said the lady, Mrs. Wilton, asked her if she knew anyone who could give an estimate on some remodeling work. My mother likes to tell people what I can do with a hammer and nails. I can...

Wakefulness. (short story)
January 1, 1994... JAMESON HATED Mr. Lang's dogs. There were two of them. A dark, wiry little terrier, and a large mixed breed with long, shaggy ears. Mr. Lang left them in the yard all day and they yelped at the fence, standing side by side as if they were...

Scene of the crime. (short story)
January 1, 1994... "YOU KNOW HOW Daddy feels about shopping, don't you?" Mrs. Goodman says. She fans her red-nailed fingers above the wheel, awaiting her daughter's reply. They're stopped at a traffic light, not far from the mall entrance. Edie knows...

Tommy. (short story)
January 1, 1994... THERE ARE PEOPLE who remain connected to us throughout our lives, who seem to follow a similar trajectory, more often through accident than design. It was that way with Tommy Pendleton and me: all these years since we'd both left Fields, Ohio,...

"In another life...." (poem)
January 1, 1994... People will say it at parties, speaking of the shock one feels at being quite familiar with some place one's never been, or with a face not seen before. Again last night I heard it from a friend just home from the south of France. And years ago I...

Old priests. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Old priests flutter in the garden of the rectory Coats and collars gone Black suspenders dangling Grackles scold from a magnolia Mass has ended No parishioners to ask the holy men to dinner Alone a priest is unctuous and apple-faced In a flock...

Passages. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Flying restless, as the mind floats, for a passage seven miles above the deep, monotonous, kinetic measures of the sea-- that was last night, a broken sleep into the dawn at Gatwick; and this is England, windwashed green to glorify the world's...

Photograph of five men crossing a creek. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Any wishful thought from a hunting or woodcutting companion would bring his famous quip: "And people in Hell want ice water." It's scrawled like sticks dropped in snow on the back of this photograph, a vengeful caption. Of a hard, silent mountain...

AA meeting. (poem)
January 1, 1994... One after another they rise in this basement of folding chairs, each telling a different story, Each saying they're all the same. A woman, close to three hundred pounds, Tells how she can't go out, can't drive, But drinks, the first half-bottle...

Crossing Brooklyn Bridge. (poem)
January 1, 1994... for an unknown man, and for Ed Last fall I moved across the river and sometimes to watch the lights would walk home over the bridge. It was so misty that night you couldn't see the city or-- I don't know why I walked-- the water for the dark....

Blue Danube. (poem)
January 1, 1994... As we clung to the comer and catcalled, Miz Caldwell waltzed her tall befuddled friend across the room. When the record circled past the last note, she snapped her partner to a halt. The needle scraped. Miz Caldwell turned to us and said, "A...

Seventeen. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Ahead of me, the dog reared on its rope, and swayed. The pickup took a hard left turn, and the dog tipped off the side. He scrabbled, fell, and scraped along the hot asphalt before he tumbled back into the air. I pounded on my horn and yelled....

Ancient air: a stony sestina, doubled in time. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Ancient Air: A Stony Sestina, Doubled in Time Someone left a rose on Dante's stone. The woman who keeps his grounds speaks, as if remembering a quirky neighbor who died last year. Old quiet heart of an empire, Ravenna. Twenty years ago I...

Seamstress. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Seamstress I woke last night from dreamless sleep to hear what in the distance sounded like barely audible, tuneless humming, womanly and maternal. Was it humming? Enough it sounded so, it was as comforting. All was still. The time near...

The motorcycle. (poem)
January 1, 1994... The Motorcycle Twenty years ago, zipping the black jacket tight at waist and wrists, I entered my own death like walking down steps into a dark pool at night; or I heard oceans whisper as I lowered the white shell of the helmet over my...

A photo of my mother in Haiti. (poem)
January 1, 1994... A Photo of My Mother in Haiti The journey continued that day, extended past this photo's moment. We made it all the way to the abandoned fort at the top, its rusted cannons pointing out at the bay. Jonathan was stung by wasps. We each...

Turning point. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Turning Point I think you stopped wanting me then, that last afternoon past the pier, not in any way you thought of, but that way that it happens, so that later you only know somewhere you left it behind. I remember you were swinging the...

Circle of night. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Circle of Night The stars pour out their palm of salt. There's a death in the house next door. We do not really know them. There's an empty field between us. There's a death in the house next door. A friend of a friend has called. There's...

My father and Johnny. (poem)
January 1, 1994... My Father and Johnny Miami. February, 1950 This is the month that keeps returning, Miami sky cool as silk. Hibiscus and frangipani in bloom, lawns crisp as new twenties. Florence and Johnny--my aunt and uncle from Savannah--are...

At the Tennessee state fair I think of you. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Sunday afternoon, hot, the last day before this show moves west to Memphis, all tickets half-off. Everyone is wary, thinks the games are rigged, the animals drugged, the sausages soaked in salmonella. Behind a billboard built ground-level a carny...

Secret anniversaries. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Unbidden, years later they spring to mind as you're writing the date on a check, making note of a doctor's appointment--that first kiss with someone whose name you've forgotten, the due date of a child who never was born. You might be standing in...

Commencement. (poem)
January 1, 1994... In the emptied stadium he leans his back against a steel pole beside the cinder track circling the football field. His mother sits at the base of the pole, on the other side, hugging her knees. Each of them looks through sunglasses into a...

Fence. (poem)
January 1, 1994... At first I thought she was pounding it, trying to break out, but her fists were relaxed, and at closer range I could see she was holding little, felt-covered mallets, playing a sort of tune on the corrugated steel. She never looked my way, but...

Killing the snakes. (poem)
January 1, 1994... I didn't know you were watching, something animal in me driving the shovel down. In the end even I could hear the noise I made, a feral grunting, the rasp of pure rage, a wet hiss half malediction, half terror. I'm lucky, ashamed but knowing your...

Romance. (poem)
January 1, 1994... This frightened, horny boy Sits in a jazz club full of Jungle ferns and leopard skins. A piano trio is playing, Dulcet and precise, "My One and Only Love." Hank Jones or Billy Taylor? Al Haig? Ellis Larkins? It does not matter. What counts is...

Aurora Borealis. (poem)
January 1, 1994... Years ago I felt spectacular in winter, Worked the night shift in the open hearth, Laboring for hours in a sweaty T-shirt. Then at break I'd slip out into the millyard And watch steam rise from my skin As powdery snow swirled up into the stars....

Diz's face. (poem)
January 1, 1994... One of Diz's routines was to come on stage And ask the crowd's indulgence while His group tuned up. Then he'd stomp The floor and everybody'd hit one crazy note. "That's good enough for jazz," he'd say, His great, wide face opening like a...

Metaphysics of the image in Charles Wright and Paul Cezanne.
January 1, 1994... All my poems seem to be an ongoing argument with myself about the unlikelihood of salvation. --Charles Wright IN SEARCH OF THE ABSOLUTE, Charles Wright finds himself in a world of things, "the world of ten thousand...

Good old ways of the good old days.
January 1, 1994... I GET SO MUCH pleasure from acquiring books that I sometimes buy them just to keep in practice. The point of such irresponsible behavior is a compounded one, and a compounded point is hardly pointed at all. Its value lies somewhere in the dark...

Reeds and hides: Cormac McCarthy's domestic spaces.
January 1, 1994... NEARLY ALL THE PROTAGONISTS in Cormac McCarthy novels flee from or lose their homes. Kenneth Rattner lights out from the cabin he shares with Mildred and his young son (The Orchard Keeper), Lester Ballard's family farm is sold out from under...

Going Back to Bisbee.
January 1, 1994... By Richard Shelton. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press. $35.00 (cloth). Landscapes of the Alternate Self BACK FAR ENOUGH or in deep enough, we imagine a place where life was an inhabited narrative. Its topography...

The Same River Twice.
January 1, 1994... By Chris Offutt. New York: Simon and Schuster. $18.00 (cloth). Landscapes of the Alternate Self BACK FAR ENOUGH or in deep enough, we imagine a place where life was an inhabited narrative. Its topography resembles a landscape from...

The Meadow.
January 1, 1994... By James Galvin. New York: Henry Holt and Co. $10.95 (paper). Landscapes of the Alternate Self BACK FAR ENOUGH or in deep enough, we imagine a place where life was an inhabited narrative. Its topography resembles a landscape from...

The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court.
January 1, 1994... "The Green Fields of Tennessee" Nothing is left to chance in the stories of Peter Taylor. His work is shaped by an understanding of the fact that wisdom is the gift of experience, not of inspiration. Many of the elegantly crafted stories...

Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture.
January 1, 1994... Some Poets' Criticism and the Age By Dana Gioia. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, $25.00 (cloth). American Poetry is in bad shape. Our poets not only take in one another's laundry, they also do it in public. By "poets" I mean a coterie...

The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose: Moral Essays on the Poet's Calling.
January 1, 1994... Some Poets' Criticism and the Age By Mary Kinzie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. #16.95 (paper) American Poetry is in bad shape. Our poets not only take in one another's laundry, they also do it in public. By "poets" I mean...

The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers.
January 1, 1994... Some Poets' Criticism and the Age By Allen Grossman with Mark Halliday. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. $14.95 (paper). American Poetry is in bad shape. Our poets not only take in one another's laundry, they also do it in...

Walking Light: Essays and Memoirs.
January 1, 1994... Some Poets' Criticism and the Age By Stephen Dunn. New York: Norton. $20.95 (cloth). American Poetry is in bad shape. Our poets not only take in one another's laundry, they also do it in public. By "poets" I mean a coterie of...