Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Homage to Appalachia

This new video attempts to express our wistful homage to Appalachia.  Dan and I have lived here among the Blue Ridge Mountains 
longer than in any other place — so long now that we no longer feel like outlanders from the flatlands of the Midwest!

But to create this film, I needed some authentic barn imagery.  So I asked Bristol artist Val Lyle — admired for her own exhibits paying 
homage to the tobacco barns of Appalachia — for permission to use two of her paintings that appear in the second segment of the video, 
after my own mountain and cicada images.    
                                                                                                                                                                                          --Suzanne
[To learn more about Val, visit  www.vglyle.com]


"Appalachian Spirit"
          

_________________________________________________________________________________

   Appalachian Spirit

   Strolling parched hills
    in late August

        I come upon husks
                           of cicadas . . .

                    Past molting
       they cling hollow to the scaly
            bark of pines;
      shaped like
empty alms bowls,
            those bowed & brittle
ghost-spoors

      that once bore
      the secret of  
      flight.
                  
Life’s fragile pulse
allures me
          all the time.

                         It beckons
             like abandoned shacks
of lost tobacco-farms
passed on the
                        Interstate,
     slumped by their rust-
     crowned barns . . .
                   so tranquil now
            & timeless,
like the rest of the world
unfolding
            before it falls
                              away.


                                    Southwest Virginia


 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Appalachian Spirit” was first published (under the title “Fading Spirits”) in the Appalachian Journal [ASU], Boone, NC.  
The present version is forthcoming in Back to the Source: Selected Poems & Parables (San Francisco Bay Press, 2015).



4 comments:

  1. Magical but melancholy poem-movie. Beautiful.

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  2. You two (three including Val this time) always give me a new perspective! Thanks!

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  3. Love how this piece conveys the sense of what’s passing in our region without saying anything directly about development (i.e., Wal-Mart!). Just that one mention of “interstate” says so much about “progress.” The cicada, the barn paintings: fragile yet powerful.

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  4. As always, a sensitive, insightful expression of the world i which we live - so often overlooked. This collaboration is very special. Thank you for sharing. Also, ditto on the three previous comments.

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