Irvin S. Cobb Bridge

Irvin S. Cobb Bridge

Irvin S. Cobb Bridge.  Some people call it Danger Bridge.  Okay, so maybe we're the only ones who call it Danger Bridge.  Beautiful bridge, but it reminds me of the Scream Machine at the Atlanta Six Flags.  Not a comparison you want to make to a bridge you're crossing in the early morning fog while trying to get to the interstate from Paducah, KY backroads. This bridge reopened back in September of this year after being closed for approximately four months for repairs and modifications.  The modifications were to restrict width and weight of vehicles using the bridge...mainly to stop illegal truck traffic.  Eric and I shudder to think of what encountering an 18-wheeler or a farm tractor on that bridge would be like...

"The Brookport Bridge (officially the Irvin S. Cobb Bridge) is a ten-span, steel deck (grate), narrow two-lane truss bridge that carries U.S. Route 45 (US 45) across the Ohio River in the U.S. states of Illinois and Kentucky. It connects Paducah, Kentucky, north to Brookport, Illinois.

The bridge is named after Irvin S. Cobb, an author and journalist who was born in Paducah." (Wikipedia)

It's short closure had an economic impact:

Brookport Bridge closure turns the lights out on a local business

'Cause he's real good at what he does...

Had the good fortune to have an old friend in town last week.  It wasn’t a social call, but not every moment was work, either.  Dan was in from Connecticut to give a poetry reading at the library and to conduct workshops at some of the local high schools.  He did everything he came into town to do, and made quite a name for himself as he did.  I believe that he may even be an honorary citizen of Gadsden now, for all his local-high-school-football-score-knowin,’ Gone-with-the-Wind-exhibit-tournin,’ and fried-chicken-eatin’ ways.  That’s all fine and good, but the real reasons for him being an honorary Gadsdenite is because he gave one hell of a reading at the library, and turned about a hundred and twenty students into poets.  I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of a Gadsden chapter of the Daniel Donaghy Club, and that they were working on an epic poem about his exploits along the banks of the Coosa.  I could see it rivaling the story of Emma Sansom or Noccalula…

During one of the high school workshops, Dan brainstormed with the students and asked them to write two narrative portrait poems, based upon certain personal things, following certain guidelines. He encouraged me and my friends (a coworker, who was sitting in on the exercise, and the student’s teacher) to participate as well.

The students worked.  They worked with eyes looking up to the ceiling while thinking.  They worked with arms curled around their papers (to shield from prying eyes) when writing.  They seemed unaffected by the assignment.  Or less affected by the assignment than were the adults.

For us adults (and I’m basing my assessment upon the fact that, when I glanced over at my coworker friend and at my teacher friend, they gave me the same anguished look that I imagine was on my own face), the assignment was like what I would imagine a person’s first session of therapy to be like.  I didn’t know where to begin.  And once I started writing, oh, my gosh, I went and made the poems too personal, too therapeutic, too not-for-reading-to-a-group-of-high-school-students-with-whom-I-conduct-business-with-some-of-their-parents.  I just prayed to not be called upon to read my poems out loud, which was fitting…because I’m sure that I would’ve felt the same way, had I been seventeen, and part of the student body that day. 

So, with the understanding that I am not a writer or poet (although my parents may think differently because they are the people who bankrolled my ballet career, my painting career, my sewing career, which means I am probably still a brilliant ballerina/sartorialist/painter in their eyes.  In actuality, I'm just a sometimes teacher of "Ballet for the Uncoordinated," a weekend sewer of stuffed animals, and a painter who can only do the kind of painting that is considered manual labor.), I present my two poems.  As you will see, they are linked, and meant to be read together:

Dinner at Elizabeth Padgett’s Trailer, Waynesburg, KY, Summer 1982

A housedressed Gran at the stove,

scrape, scrape, scraping a wooden spoon along the bottom of the skillet.

A knock at the trailer door.

Sky blotted out by Uncle Roder’s dark form.

Smell of red-eye gravy and his hat is missing.

I open the door to his “I done her up right this time.”

This, over the sound of dinner being made.

Aunt Sarah & Uncle Roder’s Farm, Waynesburg, KY Summer 1982

Corn, rows a body could get lost in, leading to a bleached-grey barn.

Rustling of stalks, mom’s footfalls in front of me, and Gran stumbling out of the barn, “The son of a bitch’s killed her!”

A dog’s mournful wail, for hunger, not for this loss.

Me, blinking hard, an impossibly blue sky, even more impossible scene unfolding.

Nose full of animal, both body and manure.

Aunt Sarah, Uncle Roder, Gran, mom and me,

A straight-line equation equaling nothing good can come of this

On a farm in Waynesburg, KY during the summer of 1982.

What did I tell you?  Not fit for certain company, right?  Well, they are what they are.  And I have Dan to thank for dragging them out of me.

Soon, I’ll be posting the intro I gave for Dan’s reading at the library.  It’s not quite a review of his work, but it is pretty darn close, in my eyes.  And I want folks to get out there and read his work.  'Cause he's real good at what he does.

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Oh, my. If you have never read anything authored by Daniel Woodrell and you are planning to start with his latest novel Winter’s Bone, you’d just best go ahead and brace yourself. As chilling as the wintery Appalachian landscape in which Woodrell’s characters live (and, in some cases, die), Winter’s Bone is the dark, poetic tale of sixteen-year old Ree Dolly. She’s looking for her daddy, Jessup Dolly, a known meth cook who has disappeared, leaving her as the sole caregiver to her mentally ill mother and two younger brothers. He has also signed over all of their property, house included, in order to post bond on his most recent arrest. If Jessup doesn’t show up for his looming court date, everything will be lost. The only people who can help Ree locate Jessup are her kinfolk…and they’re NOT talking. Woodrell uses his words sparingly; carefully and brutally telling Ree’s story. Every word of this novel is important. Don’t skip a single one.

What speaks to me the most about Woodrell’s work is his precise description of the poor Appalachian inhabitants of Ree’s community (most of whom she is in some way kin). Having spent most of my adolescent summers and Thanksgivings at my grandmother’s house in rural Kentucky, I recognize the truth in Woodrell’s words. Familiar are the close shacks, or trailers pulled up next to trailers, families living up under each other. Familiar are the fresh animal carcasses hanging from trees and porches, a different kind of strange fruit. Familiar is the justice effected by members of the community, not by the law. Living in rural Appalachia leaves its mark on a person. Ree best describes some of the most visible marks. “With her eyes closed she could call them near, see those olden Dolly kin who had so many bones that broke, broke and mended, broke and mended wrong, so they limped through life on the bad-mended bones for year upon year until falling dead in a single evening from something that sounded wet in the lungs. The men came to mind as mostly idle between nights of running wild or time in the pen, cooking moon and gathering around the spout, with ears chewed, fingers chopped, arms shot away, and no apologies grunted ever. The women came to mind bigger, closer, with their lonely eyes and homely yellow teeth, mouths clamped against smiles, working in the hot fields from can to can’t, hands tattered rough as dry cobs, lips cracked all winter, a white dress for marrying, a black dress for burying, and Ree nodded yup. Yup” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 28&29).

Everything foreshadows the danger and brutality Woodrell’s characters face daily. “The sky lay dark and low so a hawk circling overhead floated in and out of clouds. The wind heaved and knocked the hood from her head. That hawk was riding the heaving wind looking to kill something. Looking to snatch something, rip it bloody, chew the tasty parts, let the bones drop” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 29).

Especially compelling is Ree’s baby brother Harold, who is tender, even as Ree tries to teach him how live in their merciless environment. Harold wants to set food out for the coyotes because they “look like dogs” and “they’re hungry.” Impatiently Ree responds, “’Settin’ out food’ll draw ‘em close-that’s likely how they’ll come too close and get shot, Harold. Don’t set no goddam food out. It looks like you’re doin’ nice, but you ain’t. You’re just bringin’ ‘em into range, is all.’” Harold still pleads, “But you can hear how hungry they are” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 46). Hungry sounds the same, whether the sound comes from child or animal. Harold painfully recognizes the sound of hungry because he’s been hungry himself. In another moment when Ree is teaching the boys to shoot squirrels, Harold has shot one in the hind quarters without killing it, and the animal is writhing in the snow. Ree instructs Harold to “’notch his head ‘tween two fingers’n pull-like with a chicken.’” Harold cries, “He’s callin’ for his momma!” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 103).

I could keep on with this review, but that would keep you from going out and getting a copy of this book to read, because everyone should read this book. Now, go on out and get it.