Diane Gilliam Fisher
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The viewpoint is that of a fellow camp resident observer, in fact or by family extension or historical association, a single personʻs voice used to inhabit multiple persons
storied livesʻ stories. The whole is a Modern Ballad, less thorough than the old Scottish self-immolating (Lowlandsʻ Scotch version) sense of tragedy, but equally brilliant. Of a Coal Mining communityʻs history in a modern history of the United States (we should shift out of calling the U.S.A. "America" for it is merely one of three parts of North America --which means the effects are diffused and so easy to romanticize as though we are still living in the times of the first immigration -- and so excuse our failures) we should place this book at the head of Succinct ethnohistories of Modern U.S.A. For mine shafts still collapse -- not only in the U.S., we have seen recently, but in larger socio-economic communities like that of Chile. The Chilean tragedy was world news, long before which, in the English speaking world, was the Celtic singing Welsh. Coal Mine tragedies occurs in many countries, from which we have yet to hear, even as history, leave alone poetry. Fisherʻs subject is therefore far more than Appalachia.
The marvel of Fisherʻs writing is in her finely nuanced ear for the Rhythm and Diction in the music of the West Virginia speech -- the clarity of her Coal Minersʻ grammar. They are sifted out of a mind that is rare for its breadth of understanding of how the people behind the speakings think in their speakings. There is also irony and humour in the views and in the language -- the language captures the dialect selectively, it should be said, so that the poems may be easily understood by any entrenched Standard English reader of the numerous Englishes extant in the world. The subtle handling accompanied by an obvious understanding of Language itself is instructive for poets and scholars alike, of which Fisher is one.
"After Harlan, I donʻt hardly remember,/Like the brain fever when I was five-- / I come out the other side not able to walk/ nor talk nor, Mama says, even cry. / Mama and Daddy brung me home./ I told Mama, I said, ʻI canʻt bear it.ʻ ʻ No, you canʻt, Ina,ʻ she said. ʻ But you will.ʻ / And she give me a basket to hunt sang/ . . . Thereʻs hardly any left/ with perfect roots -- theyʻll be missing both arms/ or a leg below the knee or a piece of the face./ You canʻt find a whole man. Still,/ the work feels good . .
. ." ("Sang")
In "What History Means to Me (Robert Davis, Grade 4) ":
"History is the story of what has happened, like when Papaw Clyde tells about Mother Jones in ʻ02. It is also now, like when Baldwin-Felts knocks on folks door to put them out when their Daddy joins the union or gets killed in the mine, and says, Your history."
In "Henry Burgess Decides to Go Back In":
"It donʻt do to think too much about it./The others is all going back in./ First you got to eat, then you can think / about thinking. Deal with the gun/ thatʻs aimed at you, is what we say./Things got set up this way/way back before I was born./Whoeverʻs great-granddaddy first swindled/somebody elseʻs great-grandaddy/out of his land and his life -- / may he rot in Hell. / At least we picked up out guns. / . . ."
In ("Sheepskin"):
. . . I did/ not tell him my learning come nights, / from the ragged, rocky-chested racket/ of my daddyʻs cough and the only/ Latin we got to show for it/ is on his stone." . . . . ("Sheepskin")
Because Global Warming puts fossil fuels in the dangerous list of energy sources, the coal miners life belongs to the past. Kettle Bottom is a testament to that life. The tags we need for poetry like this are: Appalachia: Courage, Appalachia: U.S. History. Appalachia: Life Without the Stereotypes, Appalachia -Family Stories. KETTLE BOTTOM is a collection of modern poems with the tenor of Appalachian ballads, in the tradition of Scotlandʻs keen, haunting "Edward, Edward," which all the world knows is a traditional ballad that is a Classic.
Leialoha A. Perkins… (mehr)