The Southern Review articles from June 2003

The Southern Review archives from June 2003

Pastels.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Pastels They always seem not pressed hard enough onto the paper, frequently embarrassed, too suffused with light, like young nuns or dewy English-type gardens. They're water music, hands trailing idly from a...

The Little Gland Which the Spirits Surround.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The Little Gland Which the Spirits Surround "Let us therefore take it that the soul has its principal seat in that little gland suspended among the cavities in the innermost segment of the brain": so Rene...

Counterearth & Lux.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Counterearth & Lux (In Pythagorean cosmology, the earth, sun, moon, fixed stars, & five known planets all orbited an invisible central fire. To bring the number of the cosmic spheres up to ten--the divine number of...

Monad.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... MONAD A whole Earth's missing, Pythagoras says: though it turns with us exactly, as the innermost sphere harmonizing the music of its celestial passage we can't hear only because we've always heard it, inaudible...

Dyad.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... DYAD Every psyche has its music, its minor version of the cosmic harmony, but warped by the halved & skull-locked hemispheres of the brain so it's atonal & unkeyed, its consonances warbling away from the 10...

Triad.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... TRIAD So the inner spheres tune against each other the music of their turning around the unmoved cosmic hearth-fire, gone in the eclipses of similitude, analogue of occluded & requisite X. ...

Tetraktys.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... TETRAKTYS If 1's a point, without dimensions, 2's the first possible & necessary line, described trajectory toward the missing other. Always 2 points imply a linkage, & thus the cosmography of form. Odd & odd are...

Refinishing.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Refinishing And why not approach figuratively the past as metaphor ingrained in the here and now? Peel away the chapped, sun-blistered paint and shellac meant to simulate rosewood, the metallic scent of ancient...

Touch.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Touch Call it grace, the smell of him, the smell of dirt. Fifteen and we were lost in the ground's heat. No streetlights deep in those woods; I'd made sure. Some things I wanted to save or hide. I let his hand roam...

The Vulnerable.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The Vulnerable Late winter afternoons in early dusk my father would lean to the radio's glow listening for London in voices crackling with distance, bringing the toll home to us. When his face expressed the grief of...

Running Together.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Running Together I want the fox to help me forget. He runs in panic, meters beyond me. I stride through blue fall air, exult in the surprise of his russet fur, the paws and long tail dipped in black. A fence ...

Water Rising.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Water Rising When the polar ice caps melt, when the water rises at Lewes, this house with its long porch and white railings, where we sit in the dark singing "American Pie" and "Barbara Ann," the verses we remember,...

Grammar.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Grammar "Like a girl's skirt, your essay should be long enough to cover the subject but short enough to make it interesting," Miss Knox would say, her own skirt just barely covering the subject, the object ...

When the Dead Want to Fight.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... When the Dead Want to Fight For instance, my mother's uncle who showed up at my aunt and uncle's one afternoon. He was drunk; he was nearly always drunk when he wasn't at work. There was another man with him, also...

Talking through a storm.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Talking through a Storm Nothing in the sky shows through the heat-tented dark but auroras of still distant lightning that open a path to the pond and fields below your second-story screened-in porch where we...

Luther and the Devil.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Luther and the Devil When I began to lecture on the Psalms and I was sitting in the refectory after we had sung matins, studying and writing my notes, the Devil came and thudded three times in the storage chamber as if dragging a...

Weeding.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Weeding When the cancer came into his prostate and the doctor said not to worry because he'd die long before that sort of thing killed him, his kids convinced him to sell the farm and move to a half acre in town....

The Salk Years.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The Salk Years While Salk Tested The boys' room was a slow walk past the basement storage room waist-high with coal that just the janitor with a leg brace could touch. Outside, every heated day, soot settled on the...

The History of My Hat.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The History of My Hat To keep the rain and wind off my skull I needed a hat of bawneen, that miracle fiber wool not far enough from the sheep to have lost its smell of origins and natural waterproofing, wool any sailor...

Blues for a Kettle Pond.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Blues for a Kettle Pond Each June we carried that year's carpentered raft on our shoulders the mile from home, going barefoot like holy pilgrims over the nobbled oak roots on those hot sand tracks, passing Rollie...

The Winter Dance Party.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The Winter Dance Party A dog with a lampshade around his neck is checking me out as I eat a pastelito on a street corner in Valencia one windy evening, and I'm guessing he's got a bobo and he's wearing the lampshade to...

Resuming Quiet.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Resuming Quiet Hand on the door--gesture of escape like that--she waits like someone in a superstition, then shakes her head, turns to him, and says, If everything on earth is sacred, you'll have to spend eternities ...

The Bells.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The Bells It's nothing, he said, a bruise. And the way he said it the word made of his mouth a pout, a small, sad, good-bye kiss. I knew his father had hit him. That wasn't odd; my dad did it too. But never...

Burning the World Clean.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Burning the World Clean A cardinal communes with bare trees, blessing each in turn. The arc of the cardinal's passage through cold air Burning the World Clean lingers like a frail admonition against forgetting, or...

It Is Because of the One Body She Tells Us.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... It Is Because of the One Body She Tells Us let ideas ragged from lack of sleep circle as they will intact all the bones deliberate inhale white morning inside its sheath cells hum nearby unaware...

Spitwads.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Spitwads Little paper cuds we made by ripping the corners or edges from homework and class notes then ruminating them into balls we'd flick from our fingertips or catapult with pencils or (sometimes after...

Fog Lifter.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Fog Lifter Mornings I walk myself awake, usually after the boats start up and work their way to sea. Bogue Sound, by the time I stumble across the island's one road, busy with cars, and come to it over...

Neither the Season, nor the Place.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Neither the Season, nor the Place Some mornings I mutter down the hallway of our marriage and open the only available door. But once in a while, say on a warm January morning, I ride out with him on the smooth lake of it,...

Villanelle for Gertrude Stein.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Villanelle for Gertrude Stein Buttons, tender, and delicate as rain, require both hands, reciprocal, with trust. Patiently, we undo and do again. What closing argument lies free of blame? I give you two: old clasps...

Charleston Language Lesson.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Charleston Language Lesson Close ranks in the Anglican churchyard, half-inch-thick slates that run the gamut of gray shades-- sun-bleached shell to dark intaglios of lichen. Words barely exist to bring the soft...

Two Excerpts from The Cachoiera Tales.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Two Excerpts from The Cachoiera Tales General Prologue When April rains had drenched the root of what March headlines had foreseen as drought, I invited my extended family-- with artificial spontaneity-- to join...

Body and Earth.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Body and Earth for Clyde Whitt When I was small, I slept in Granddaddy's arms, my head against his chest, dozing to the rhythmic wheezing my mama called Black Lung. He muscled his pickax and shovel ...

What Is Preserved.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... What Is Preserved What I remember most about that night is how, a few minutes after the call, she came, my grandmother, to my bedroom holding a hair pick outstretched toward me. I cain't do it. In the...

Revival.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Revival I'd gotten used to the goldenrod rattling its empty cup, the bony maples, the prostrate garden, the wind bothering the oak for one last brown indulgence of leaves. Now the yard's changed its hair shirt to...

Shade Tree.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Shade Tree After Sunday noon dinner men gathered where truck or car motor hung from an oak limb like some trophy shot or yanked from wood or river, and though all had their views on just how and what needed...

Night Light.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Night Light Oil lamp glows in the dark lone house reflected in a mirror and two windows: four planets conjunct, bred into a small gala of light spilling out to where I stand, staining the...

Bottleshard.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Bottleshard Delving a half foot down where the lane by Hiland Farm ran once--or no, this must have been the midden, close as an arm's easy toss from a calico-curtained window of the farmhouse kitchen--now ...

Halloween Away.(Poetry)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Halloween Away 1. Doing time in a distant town, slow afternoons close in; a mop of sleet swipes at the window, blotting the view. I watch two teams, the Boys and the Bills, butting each other, helmets and...

The Glass Eel Gatherer.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The Glass Eel Gatherer We were watching the team at practice--counting to ten, running at each other, colliding in helmets, and falling down again. Was she a fan? Hardly, she said. She was taking a...

Explosion.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Explosion Scrub pine jagged as blue granite Pebbles the rough skin of Appalachian Mountains. Unfamiliar West Virginia Startles me from daydream long enough to see A bright yellow finch dart through weeds On the...

The Nest.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... The Nest The building of it took place right under our noses, in the hedge that bordered our lives just off our porch. So at first we missed it, busy about our own arrivals and departures, till the nest was good to go: ...

Ghalib on the Writing Life.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... When a man read him a lecture against wine-drinking and told him that the prayers of a wine-drinker are never granted, Ghalib replied: "My friend, if a man has wine, what does he need to pray for?" --from Ghalib (Ralph Russell, ed.) ...

Ghazal: Saint Petersburg upon the Neva.(Poetry)(Brief Article)(Poem)
June 22, 2003... Ghazal: Saint Petersburg upon the Neva These White Nights glow, midsummer's dusky sheen upon the river. Gold Domes of the Resurrection mirror Spilled Blood's gleam upon the river. The Bronze Steed rears on his...

Uke Rivers delivers.(Fiction)(Short Story)
June 22, 2003... THE WEEK AFTER MY DADDY SOWED ME in the marriage furrow, Mama and Selena went arrowheading over at Ocmulgee, walking up from the river to the earth mounds the rattlesnake Creeks raised up to bury their kings and have church, and Mama claimed...

The son's point of view.(Fiction)(Short Story)
June 22, 2003... THE STORY BEGINS AT NINE O'CLOCK on a Saturday morning with one brother missing and the other brother lying back-down on the cool, linoleum floor with his arms and legs out in the form of a perfect human X. The boys' father is outside the...

Witness protection.(Fiction)(Short Story)
June 22, 2003... OKAY, SO I FOLLOWED HER, THE FIRST TIME. I spied on Little Twig's crazy woman. Hands balled into flailing fists, she strode toward a shallow cove on the island's undeveloped northern shore where a herd of skinny-legged herons stood transfixed....

Six Chinese cooks rose into the air.(Fiction)(Short Story)
June 22, 2003... GRANT HOLLOWAY JUMPS OVER HIS NEIGHBOR, "Leapfrogging," his neighbor calls it. "I've been leapfrogged." What Grant has done is move out of the house on his neighbor's south side and into the house on his north side. Grant has lived in the...

Honeydew.(Fiction)(Short Story)
June 22, 2003... THESE ARE THE EARLY CICADAS, four years ahead of schedule, chirping, shrilling, blistering through their skins. Thirteen years ago the night was electric with their noise, and one burrowed right into me--that little flab of skin beneath the arm...

The freestanding poetry of Yoknapatawpha.(Essays)
June 22, 2003... But above all, the courthouse: the center, the focus, the Hub... protector of the weak, judiciate and curb of the passions and lusts, repository and guardian of the aspirations and the hopes. --Requiem for a Nun WILLIAM FAULKNER...

Playing my part.(Essays)(Short Story)
June 22, 2003... The Price PRICE, THE IMMENSE WHITE PRIVATE SECURITY GUARD who with his shrimpy white partner patrolled the white suburb at night, was perched on a stool too small for him at the counter, teasing me with dirty jokes as he drank his coffee...

Self-reversal and the poetics of judgment.(Essays)(The Cave: Selected and New Poems)(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... IF HAROLD BLOOM IS RIGHT that all good writers must first learn from and ultimately break from an influential precursor, The Cave proves that C. G. ("Chuck") Hanzlicek has individuated as a poet of subtle, authentic invention. He has...

Getting serious.(Essays)(reviews of Out of This Place, Shadow of Heaven, Carver: A Life in Poems, Icon and Evidence)(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... THE FOUR COLLECTIONS CONSIDERED HERE have little in common. Varying widely in subject, tone, and style, they come together as examples of differing kinds of intensity and excellence. Ranging from biography to autobiography, from spiritual...