The Southern Review articles from March 2006

The Southern Review archives from March 2006

Lewis P. Simpson (1916-2005).(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)(Biography)
March 22, 2006... EDITOR OF The Southern Review from 1965 to 1987 and author of several widely influential volumes of American and southern literary and intellectual history, Lewis P. Simpson was, as Robert A. Ferguson has written, "our greatest modern...

A personal fable: living with Indians.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake. --ROBERT PENN WARREN AN OLD-FASHIONED...

Of Lewis P. Simpson and Michel de Montaigne: for Mimi Simpson.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... A WORD ABOUT THE SUBJECT and title I have chosen: Lewis Simpson seldom if ever brings Montaigne into his writing, and I don't recall hearing him mention even the name in twenty-plus years of close collegial and intellectual contact at Louisiana...

Lewis P. Simpson and the literary vocation.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... WRITING IN 1994 IN The Fable of the Southern Writer, Lewis Simpson began his preface with an admission, one that was characteristically modest: "For a number of years, something like forty to be more precise, I have attempted to be a historian...

Simpson the Texan.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... Was in the town of Jacksboro, in the spring of '73, That a man they named Old Griego came steppin' up to me, Said, "How you do, young feller, and how'd you like to go, To spend the summer pleasant on the range of the buffalo?" ...

Lewis P. Simpson: the critic as editor.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... THAT LEWIS V. SIMPSON was among the leading editors of his time so far as the literary quarterly is concerned strikes me as a truism. In his league or at his level during roughly the same period stand the editorial paragons Frederick Morgan at...

Live Oak House.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Live Oak House Iberville Parish The ancestry, though not Virginian, still was good: the men of upright character as well as property, the women strong, and known for beauty, but of iron will, believing all in...

White Pelicans.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)(Poem)
March 22, 2006... White Pelicans Yesterday along Lake Pontchartrain we saw their kin, brown pelicans, above the water, flying in formation, rising, dipping, tracing sine curves on the wind, with mysterious coordinates. Now we're down in...

Conejos Rising.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Conejos Rising The river's not yet crested, says the handsome fellow from the Water Board--pressed jeans and boots, a fine square jaw and resonant baritone--who's here to warn us that the floodgates at Platoro Reservoir ...

Man of Letters.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... Man of Letters for Lewis P. Simpson Oak Alley, March 1989 I thought it would be safer not to take my departure before I had cleared my conscience by writing poetry and so obeying the dream. --SOCRATES, in Plato's Phaedo I...

Remembering Lewis.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)(Biography)
March 22, 2006... WHEN I JOINED THE LSU FACULTY in the autumn semester of 1973, Lewis Simpson seemed to me a quaint, improbable figure, someone who might have doubled in movies as a genteel southern courthouse lawyer. Now and again I saw him ambling down the...

Lewis P. Simpson: "literature, art and the world of the mind and spirit".(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... ONE'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF LEWIS was of a relaxed, easygoing, friendly man, deliberate in speech and action, even a little diffident to offer an opinion, a listener--and usually ready for a cup of coffee with his faculty fellows. Later, his...

Lewis Simpson: notes on a friendship.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)(Biography)
March 22, 2006... FOR ALMOST FIFTY YEARS--from our first meeting in 1957 to his death in 2005--Lewis Simpson was at the center of my life. It was a friendship that began in a classroom but that was very different from the typical relationship between student and...

The long conversation: Lewis Simpson and the archaeology of mind.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... ... Yet shall I live. --OVID, Metamorphoses WHEN I FINISHED MY DISSERTATION on Henry Adams, language, and the problem of subjectivity in modernist versions of historiography and identity, I recorded a singular and humbling discovery. I...

Four tributes.(Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... The following was James M. Cox's contribution to "A Tribute to Lewis P. Simpson," a gathering of students, friends, scholars, and colleagues at Louisiana State University in September 2002. Those present on that occasion--and Lewis Simpson most...

A poetics of independence.(THE LIFE AND WORK OF Lewis P. Simpson)
March 22, 2006... PONDERING THE MEANING of the great event of his time, the aged John Adams said that "the real American" Revolution" "had occurred "in the minds and hearts" of the American people; therefore, those who would seek out its motives must go to "all...

On the Streets.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... On the Streets I Scary, either one of them alone. But together on that run-down corner: the young black, thick set, the older white, shock-headed, crookbacked, shaking his cane at some car passing. ...

Parents.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Parents In their tight, cramped, but mist-bright bathroom, Tucked into fresh, white Sunday towels, each In turn bent over the other's gnarled, wet feet With a two-edged, new blue blade to pare away The week's hard...

Trouble.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Trouble Trouble on the prairie, in the bending heads of the Queen Anne's lace. Among the long, long grasses flailing. And the monarchs' wings above it all, their newly flustered pulse. He comes along the...

Ground Fire.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Ground Fire I We sat together under the only tree, laced into the field to catch lightning, there wasn't any lightning, only that tremor running between your hand and my thigh, I didn't move, pretended it wasn't ...

Follow.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Follow Out in the fields, layer upon layer of green, and the sequence of wild flowers rising-pods, fringed manes, buds of lace. Each day another color brightening, introducing itself, greeting the next, taking its...

Groucho and Tom.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Groucho and Tom In June 1964 T. S. Eliot hosted dinner for Groucho Marx at Eliot's London flat. Tom, with a bitter twist of lemon, puts a closure on the shaken martinis. Groucho wants to know about "These...

Winter Dusk: New York, 1981.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Winter Dusk: New York, 1981 Snow in the act of falling, silent and undriven, seems selflessly unwilling to refuse what shapes are given to veil in its unveiling. No step of fire escape, no iron...

Omit Needless Words.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... "Omit Needless Words" But is there such a thing? The first words ever uttered-- Let there be--required a universe to answer them. The mother names her child fifty ways; his brothers name him fifty more: such...

A Late Elegy.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... A Late Elegy He argues with me about the work to be done. I argue with him about the work that still must be undone. And then we argue together about the father and the son and how to untangle the trinity knot of...

Welding Mask.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Welding Mask As the eclipse starts to drift across their eyes, my parents creep back in their house, looking younger in the softened light, their world already darker by that missing portion, long past their apogee....

Home Movies.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Home Movies Sometimes I try to watch my parents' ancient home movies, but watching them is not a passive act, for they are brittle and each time I watch them I destroy them all a little more. Just taking them from their...

For Thomas, in Glasses, at 15 Months.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... For Thomas, in Glasses, at 15 Months When we first put the glasses on his face, he struggled, and then his mouth dropped open to see a nearby world that he didn't know was there, and I wondered: Until now has there been a...

That Year.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... That Year for my mother When the black-eyed Susans begin to bloom in the backyard, and the moonbeam coreopsis bursts into tiny stars, I think of the year I banished yellow from my life. It was the year I...

Tom's Symptom.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Tom's Symptom Taking the concrete stairway as a hurdler rides and swoops and spurts on with the loop of continuity branded in his lunge (except, the stairs being downward, all was falling) Tom found the left leg gone...

Tom's Eye (Oncology Ward).(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Tom's Eye (Oncology Ward) It took the bubble of the unsuspected --high gloss, surpassingly single-- to bump Tom's settled gaze from off their train wreck. Say, an insect: a small black fly --long-bodied, all...

Tom's School Photo.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Tom's School Photo Planting his small blind foot into the future but unsuspecting, disk-faced, hair on end, the absolute sanction of breath a wired, sharp-elbowed bird trapped in his blazer, brown Tom, at ten;...

Valentine to a Blackguard.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Valentine to a Blackguard For which coins I would ballot for your man, and not mine; sweep the fire holes of a northern city and take rounds in the spleen at distant ports of...

The History of the Fairgrounds.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The History of the Fairgrounds I Modeled upon the sort of man who arrives to build it, the sort who stumbles from the dust of morning to the wild work of night, who is merely the rubble of earth and the darkened...

February 2: From the Book of Days.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... February 2: From the Book of Days It snowed and my thoughts, as always on this day, turned to my father, lodged so deep, whose February birthday has gone by again without him. Each year on Groundhog Day, he lifts...

To Hold.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... To Hold Before I left for camp, my mother sewed my name with a firm stitch into everything I owned. She even looped a string of name tapes through the scissors I keep to this day on my desk. She wanted to be sure,...

Thanksgiving.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Thanksgiving The woods were full of deer, whole tribes with steaming nostrils, does and fawns nuzzling, stretching their muzzles to bare the pale pink of their inner lips. They stood fetlock deep in the untrammeled...

Love of sport.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Love of sport In the woods, place of tall and green, place of losing your way. My father and a fat man, Santa-sized, with bow and arrow, I'm in tow, childhood is trailing, waiting to eat I am hungry, waiting to...

Birds, bypass.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Birds, bypass Were I a surgeon, I'd have trouble deciding what to leave inside you, I like old roses on my windowsill and the Pacific and neither fits easily into wishing I could have been there in the waiting room...

The evolving landscape.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The evolving landscape The high acres belong to grass, the farmer wearing blond straw hat and earplugs mows twice a year and pulls a bailer across the severed blades until the field is dotted with circles the size ...

Grill & Counter Man.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Grill & Counter Man Where he works the cupola of brass is a comfort of pots and pans. Each tool fits into the wall where he can reach it. His harness is the closeness of familiar things. ...

The Fit in West Clare.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The Fit in West Clare for Thomas Lynch I mispronounce the place names here, and when your neighbors greet us, sometimes I think it could be easier if they would simply speak Greek. The only memorable ...

Metaphor for the Long Married.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Metaphor for the Long Married Beyond familiarity there is a small lighted space-- comfortable, bright enough without blinding, warm enough for relief on a cold day-- a small place surrounded by an interesting...

Lamentations.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Lamentations What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in the spirit of gentleness? --1 CORINTHIANS 4:21 If you want to hear the stories about the sisters who thwarted chiggers by rubbing coal oil on their arms...

Quilts.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Quilts Six siblings and two parents divided by one man's wage equals two rooms and three beds. My father slept between his brothers and his father's razor strap. Some summers he slept in his uncle's...

The Warner Barracks Photography Club.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The Warner Barracks Photography Club met in the mess hall, the second Thursday of each month, eight at night. Half the members were soldiers, mostly tank crews, and one medic who worked in the small hospital; the...

A camera hanging from the shoulder.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... A camera hanging from the shoulder of a monkey thirty feet above in a tree, I couldn't tell its condition. Only a kilometer from our base camp, the jungle tightened around us, slowing our patrol. I asked the lieutenant...

The First Noble Truth.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The First Noble Truth My endodontist is a sly Buddha teaching the noble truth of suffering. He smiles at my fear, smiles at the way I open my eyes to the searing light or close them in search of soothing dark. ...

In Code.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... In Code It was the complex software created at Michigan's Gene Codes Corporation that made most of the 1,571 successful World Trade Center victim identifications possible.... This week the Gene Codes staff is working on Version 137...

Upon Being Asked What I Believe In.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Upon Being Asked What I Believe In after Dean Young I say, for starters, the word in, the way it dumps quicksand before love and trouble, or after belief and jump right! I say the days I'm sunk in up to my waist,...

Parallel Man.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Parallel Man Even the dogs in West Kerry know that the Otherworld exists and that to be in and out of it constantly is the most natural thing in the world. --NUALA NI DHOMHNAILL He comes up behind us so soundlessly he...

Purvey Translates.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Purvey Translates In ipso enim vivimus et movemur et sumus Sometimes the words I translated translated me, as when I wrote, "In Him we live and move and are." For days I dwelled in that mystery where all air...

The Steward's Prayer Book.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The Steward's Prayer Book Turned to a morning prayer for mercy with a drawing of the Lord stretching his arms over the heads of ten lepers kneeling before Him, the prayer book had lain open on a wooden stand...

Purvey Describes His Work with Wyclif.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Purvey Describes His Work with Wyclif Those afternoons in the rectory seated at opposite sides of the same table, sunlight on our manuscripts, an inkwell shared in the middle, I never wrote one word for him. ...

Worth Forgetting.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Worth Forgetting I intend to forget today, how we squared off like cocks in a ring, her small fists pecking the air, her squalls swallowing the last calm sip of morning. Though my words toppled hers, though my...

Little Deaths.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Little Deaths Enough of these tears, cried into the cranberry sauce! It's a guinea pig, for Christ's sake. Dime-store bought, an afterthought for the younger girl who never ranked a dog of her own. Yet Bella was lovely,...

L'avalasse.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... L'avalasse The old women of our parish say such rain, l'avalasse, throws sheets of sleep across your house to wash away whatever burden the day has brought. They walk outside in their nightgowns as soon as the...

Matriarchs.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Matriarchs Odd-angled cars abandoned in their slots And occasionally the muffled panic Of a family making a one-way street Out of some corridor, then cul-de-sacs Of waiting rooms, the bland aquaria Of surrounding...

The Prophet Boston Corbett on Shooting Booth.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The Prophet Boston Corbett on Shooting Booth God touched my shoulder. I was chosen. That morning in Virginia was not my first time. In the Gehenna they called Andersonville He whispered, and I commenced to preach against ...

The Middle of May.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The Middle of May One of our last big elms has died this spring at the far south end of the yard. I wouldn't have noticed except I was down there picking up branches after the storm. About noon, in the middle of...

The Chiming of the Hour.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... The Chiming of the Hour The low tone of heavy December wind moving through the attic's slatted vents awakens the woman lying on her side. She sees how the muted morning light drifts through window blinds and how her...

Moon Daughter.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Moon Daughter You smiled coyly when you said you wanted to name our daughter Destiny, our daughter who does not exist. And you smiled when I suggested Chaos instead. But since she is not and cannot be, let us make...

Two Poems from Colette to Sido and from Emily to Mary-Frances.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Two Poems from Colette to Sido and from Emily to Mary-Frances adapted translations from Colette's memoirs Sido (1929) and La maison de Claudine (1922) I For I already loved daybreak so much that my mother would give it to...

Mother's Friend.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Mother's Friend We stopped by and she greeted us so happily, delighted by our voyage, by our departure to faraway realms, that kind of happy person who sees at once the happiness potential in simply getting out of bed....

A Personal Savior.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... A Personal Savior Under a moon like a ripe yellow cantaloupe the youth minister confessed his doubt--to me. We stood between cars in the church parking lot, after the youth group meeting, keys in hand. It was Sunday...

A Necklace of Ants.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... A Necklace of Ants To a clown, is grace a pair of floppy shoes? To a waitress in Duluth, a favorite bra she washes in the sink, then hangs by the window, hoping it will dry by morning? I don't mean we slip God on...

Suburban Revelation.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Suburban Revelation She loved her late news, my aunt. So after a microburst snapped the roof aerial, Uncle climbed to the bedroom each night, arms wide, and played antenna for her. And again their house was haunted by...

Vespers.(Poem)
March 22, 2006... Vespers Taste me, God, the way a generous vintner tastes a so-so wine, swishing around his mouth what sat on the shelf too long but had good color. Spit out my faults, breathe in cool air to set my smoky...

Subordinate lives.(A World of Light)(Unveiling the Prophet: The Misadventures of a Reluctant Debutante)(The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays)(Book review)
March 22, 2006... IN FLOYD SKLOOT'S A World of Light, Lucy Ferriss's Unveiling the Prophet, and Wendell Berry's The Way of Ignorance, "the memoir" has been re-imagined and reshaped. Ranging from the essentially personal to the personal-political to the...

Re-collections.(No Heaven)(Among the Names)(Postcards from the Interior)(The Infinity Sessions)(Book review)
March 22, 2006... RE-MIX, MASHUP, BASTARD POP... The English language is finding new ways to communicate our awareness that we're living in a cut-up world. We're permeated with ideas synthesized from places distant in geographic, temporal, and social space....