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Visual Remembrance
Ain’t the Land is a collection of place-rooted poems that moves through Appalachia town by town, exploring weather, memory, labor, family, faith, hunger, animals, old speech, and stubborn grief. Were there any poets or other writers who influenced your work on this collection?
That’s a great question. The first poet that I latched on to during this process of writing the poems was Cynthia Cruz. Her poem “Sparks, Nevada,” published in the May 2014 issue of Poetry Magazine, really floored me. I didn’t discover it until several years afterwards, and I’m not even sure how I came by it, but the imagery, the dream-scape, the sense of loss and mistaken, even unavoidable tragedy stayed with me, and I decided to write an imitation poem titled “Unaka Springs, Tennessee.” A few years later, I found Richard Hugo’s essay, “Triggering Towns,” while doing research for my thesis on the underappreciated yet immense 20th-century Tennessee poet, George Scarbrough. Hugo’s essay explores the importance of the strange town in releasing the poet’s imagination to free language from emotional attachment. And I figured I had been through many of these towns, yet they weren’t my hometown, so I based these poems on what I remembered of the towns, and they sparked my memories from other places, my own family. It really became a sort of visual remembrance in a persona’s voice mingled, as these ventures are, with what Margalit Fox called “the hazy place where truth, fiction, and memory meet.” Maybe because I had just completed my thesis on Scarbrough, I also began to stray from Cruz’s line structuring and utilize what I found in Scarbrough’s poems: embedded classic ballad meter in loosely structured stanza poems. Finally, I was reading E. B. Miles’ naturalist study, Our Southern Birds, and also reading a lot of English ballads recorded in the Southern mountains from the early 20th century during the writing of all 52 poems.
Faith appears throughout the collection, sometimes as comfort and sometimes as something to wrestle with. How has your own spiritual life influenced your poetry?
Oh, I’d say religious imagery is very real and palpable to me, and using it in poetry helps me to understand, or better yet, envision these mythical scenes from antiquity in our century so insistent on the “now.” I remember using the Ezekiel Wheel—that old trope—in a poem (I think it’s “Shouns, Tennessee”), and of course the religious symbolism is clear yet mystical—the Holy Ghost at the center of life (of matter) like a wheel spinning within a wheel. I don’t know why I like re-imagining these mythical scenes from my religion, but I guess it has to do with context, and I guess my poetry is asking, “Is God here?” I remember growing up and singing these famous hymns with elevated scenes of the risen lamb, like stuff out of Revelation. I was stumped. I didn’t want to sing a lie, so my dad recommended that I use my imagination. That helped. I stopped worrying about whether what I sang was what I believed; I started singing to see. I’m trying to just answer off the cuff, like I was hearing you ask me these questions, and this middling attempt may be the best I can offer right now, but it’s a relief to get a question about spirituality as a viable influence on the writing of a poem. An editor once told me that some of the poems in this series were “speculative” because they included religious tropes, and I was tickled pink. Spiritual reality is about as separate from material reality as water systems are “separate” from the land, but I guess we don’t always engage in the less visible systems with fear and trembling.
How did you decide the order of the poems, and did you want readers to experience them as a journey through Appalachia?
I took the cue for the poems’ organization from their form. I figured I had pairs of lines in couplets, so I should look for echoes between poems and join them up in a sort of journey through the seasons in three series or years. Since the book was mostly drafted in a three-year period, there are several distinct groups of poems on the same season yet with different tones. Yet the poems are not chronological, maybe chthonological–organized by earth, not time. So, there endf up being “pairings” throughout the collections—poems in close proximity with similar topics, images, referents, etc. As I was submitting the poems to periodicals and literary magazines, I started to notice how I was favoring the idea of certain of them going toward the front or toward the end, and so on. A friend and great poet, Jesse Graves, recommended that the poem “Duffield, Virginia” be the first poem, and I liked that idea, so I did it. He said that the highway scene of the poem would complement the tone of the book—vignettes or visitations. The reader is more like the pilgrim in contrast to the voices in the poems, which are staid. I wouldn’t call this a tour. Many of the places included in the book aren’t what you might call destinations—out of the way for many, even dyed-in-the-wool Appalachians.
What do you hope readers who have never visited Appalachia will come away understanding after reading Ain’t the Land?
I have to remind myself that I’m not an Appalachian poet writing poetry to advance the region or its customs. I’m a poet above all else, and the poem is the ends and the means, but in many ways, these poems are more rural or remote. That being said, a lot of my neighbors are thoughtful people, but they don’t always think about things that have broad appeal to “average” Americans (of course, this is just my impression after watching the nightly news these some odd years). So, I guess you could say that the concerns or topics of the poems don’t have broad appeal. If someone struggles to feel relevant when they journey through arcanus, they would do well to spare themselves from my little book. However, if a reader enjoys the occasional break from our self-obsessed, technocratic, newfangled age, then these poems may have something to offer. A friend of mine told me that he likes to go to the woods for fun to bike, camp, hike, you name it, and he told me that when he read these town poems, he was “in the woods,” which is the sort of compliment that I am sure I will never be able to fully fathom or appreciate.
Author Links: Website
Ain’t the Land
Ain’t the Land, by William Rieppe Moore, is a collection of place-rooted poems that moves through Appalachia town by town, from Duffield and Boone Gap to Tellico Plains and Bluffton, gathering weather, memory, labor, family, faith, hunger, animals, old speech, and stubborn grief into a single rough-hewn music. The poems feel less like postcards from a region than like weathered boards pulled from an old barn, each one holding a different stain of rain, blood, smoke, sunlight, or sorrow. Again and again, Moore writes from the charged border between belonging and estrangement, where the land is beloved but not romanticized, where beans are picked, hens are killed, fires are built, and the past keeps breathing under the floorboards.
What struck me most was how alive the language feels. Moore’s voice has a wild, bristling confidence, full of Appalachian idiom, biblical echo, botanical precision, and sudden surreal turns. I loved the way a road becomes “a crow ribbon cut loose” in “Duffield, Virginia,” or how the speaker in “Can Lot, Tennessee” can move from Saturn and Jupiter to wanting “a crosscut saw and a man to go with it” without the poem feeling strained. That mix of cosmic scale and woodstove practicality is one of the book’s great pleasures. The diction can be dense, but I found that fitting. These poems aren’t trimmed hedges. They’re briars, bean vines, creek banks, and smoke. You have to push into them a little, and they leave scratches.
Moore is writing about land, but he’s also writing about inheritance, class, ecological loss, faith, violence, and the uneasy dignity of people who know how to make do. In “Fords Branch, Kentucky,” the plea for the “great upland” to speak before places become “the poetry of was” hit me hard because it names one of the collection’s deepest fears: that whole ways of living can vanish into elegy before anyone has properly listened. I also appreciated that the book doesn’t flatten rural life into sweetness. There’s tenderness here, but also cruelty, like the flock eating the cracked last egg in “Almira, Kentucky,” or the possums and shotguns in “Stoney Creek, Tennessee.” Those moments hurt, and they should. They give the collection moral weight.
I came away from Ain’t the Land feeling that I’d been led through a landscape where everything has a voice, even rot, weather, tools, birds, and old sayings. It’s a rewarding collection if you like poetry with muscle, mud, strangeness, and soul. Moore’s writing can be thorny, but it’s thorny because it’s alive and because it refuses to make the mountains merely pretty. I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy contemporary poetry rooted in place, especially those drawn to Appalachian literature, ecological memory, folk speech, and poems that sound like they were made by someone listening closely to both the dead and the dirt underfoot.
Pages: 64
Unusual “Visions”
Mallory O’Connor Author Interview
Epiphany’s Gift follows one young girl through her life as she struggles to cope with an extraordinary gift. What was the inspiration for her gift and the struggles she faced?
As a child, I had several powerful “visions” and/or paranormal experiences. Because the experiences were so exciting and so unusual, I was surprised to find that when I talked about these experiences, adults didn’t want to hear about it. They told me it was my imagination. Or worse. So, I stopped talking to anyone and kept my experiences to myself. Later, I began to read about other people who had unusual “visions.” I began to study the writings of religious mystics and found many similarities to my own encounters with “another level of existence.” In 1979, I met a psychic medium and we became friends. Although my “mystical” experiences were not the same as her “impressions,” we found we had a lot in common and have remained friends ever since.
I really enjoyed the well developed character in the book. Was there anything taken from your own life and put into the story?
Along with my childhood experiences, I included a number of “autobiographical” elements in the story. One is my work as an art historian and my fascination with artists such as William Blake and his visionary illustrations, especially the works he did of Dante’s Inferno. I also incorporated my interest in Asian art and culture in the character of Maro Guido, an art crimes investigator who is half Japanese. I wanted to explore his views about art from a non-Western perspective. And, I set Epiphany’s Gift in southern Ohio where I lived for four years while attending Ohio University. I was fascinated with Appalachian culture and wanted to immerse myself in the area and its special landscape.
This book blends several genres exceptionally well. Was this your intention or did this happen organically while writing?
When I first started writing Epiphany’s Gift, I intended to create a series of stories that combined paranormal events with art crimes. I wanted my readers to understand the problem of art theft and the significance of taking cultural treasures out of the public arena and into private collections where they are only seen by a few individuals. I believe that art has a lot to teach us about how our civilization developed and why we are who we are. So, I think that art belongs in a larger world that is open to the public.
But I also wanted to explore the issue of climate change and environmental degradation. I was encouraged by Dan Bloom, a climate activist and editor of the Cli-Fi Report, to explore various aspects of global warming and its consequences in my writing. In Epiphany’s Gift I take on the issue of fracking and its consequences. In subsequent books, I plan to focus on a number of climate-related issues including the spread of tropical diseases, effects on water resources, and catastrophic weather events.
So, my stories will be about paranormal events, art crimes and global climate change. Something for everyone!
When will this book be available and where can readers pick up a copy?
I’ve just sent the manuscript off to the publisher, so I expect the book will be available in May or June 2019. It will be available on Amazon, through Archway Publishing, and on my website: www.mallorymoconnor.com. Hopefully, it will later be available at libraries and bookstores. Connect with me through my website and I’d be happy to answer questions.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
For thirty years, Epiphany Mayall has worked as a psychic medium in the small Spiritualist community of Cassadaga, Florida. But when she returns to her childhood home in Mt. Eden, Ohio, to visit her aging mother, she finds that the rural community is reeling from a series of alarming events. The pristine world of her childhood is being destroyed. Wells and creeks are polluted, and earthquakes have become a frequent danger.
Epiphany’s former professor and mentor, art historian Dr. John Bernhardt, believes that the problems are the result of fracking operations that are being carried out by an energy corporation in the region, and that someone from the company is also connected with the disappearance of an illustration of Dante’s Inferno from the university museum. Bernhardt writes an article for the local newspaper about his theory, but the next day he is found dead. When John’s ghost appears to Epiphany and tells her that he was poisoned, she becomes determined to find the answers to several questions: who is responsible for the environmental disaster, who stole the illustration of Dante’s Inferno from the university museum, and who murdered Professor Bernhardt?
Aided by art crimes investigator, Maro Gaido, and by Blake King, an eccentric local artist, Epiphany tries to put together the pieces of a disturbing puzzle, but finds her efforts thwarted at every turn. Even a State Senator cannot help. As the earthquakes escalate, Epiphany begins to wonder if even her psychic gifts are enough to find the answers before it’s too late to save her loved ones from disaster.
www.mallorymoconnor.com
Society Doesn’t Approve
Laura Hunter Author Interview
Beloved Mother follows the lives of several family members in a poor coal-mining town during the 1900’s. What was the inspiration for the setup to this intriguing novel?
I know these people. I grew up in a lower Appalachian coalmining area. My mother grew up in the Appalachians where coalmining was a way of life. I spent my summers there where soil was a black as the coal itself, where miners can’t wash the black rings from around their eyes. The livelihood of the community depends on what can be extracted from the earth’s belly. No coal=no food, no warmth, no clothing. An accident, a death, would turn a woman’s life into a catastrophe, as she tired simply to feed her children.
Three woman struggle to find their place in a harsh Appalachian mining town. What were some obstacles you felt were important to telling their story?
One of the primary obstacles women faced then, and for many today, is society’s failure to recognize that women must cope with whatever they have available. Often times, what they are relegated to do is not what society accepts. Society then shuns them, casts them aside, because they are different. The women in BELOVED MOTHER must choose. Mona must choose a way of life that will allow her to survive by using what she has been taught. Anna chooses to live her life for a lover, and Lily chooses to make her own way through what Nature offers her. Society doesn’t approve of any of their choices. As a result, all three find themselves isolated.
You explore many ideas in this novel like family, God, and humanity. What were some themes you wanted to capture while writing?
I didn’t think about themes as I wrote BELOVED MOTHER. The threads seemed to come together as the plot developed. This novel was gifted me. Once the characters and setting gelled, the action, dialogue, senses and plot – all the story elements – played out before me as if I were watching a movie. After I finished the preliminary plot, I did see that each of the women hold a different concept of family, even though they are biologically connected. I initially included the spirit world to emphasize the Cherokee legends, to justify the bizarre actions of Mona and to lighten the tone of what was happening to the earth people. As the spirits Sister Sun, Brother Moon and Great Spirit came into focus, I realized that they offer the differing beliefs of many people, not just mountain folk or Native Americans. As a result, the earth characters pull from the spirit world in order to establish their own philosophy. The beliefs are as different as the characters themselves. Some would argue that one belief is as valid as another.
God? God, or a supernatural power, is presented as a vengeful Old Testament being, a being that terrifies Anna as she realizes she is dying. As Great Spirit is known to Mona and Lily, this supreme being is sometimes tired, a forgetful character who gets overwhelmed by the actions of those on earth. Other times, he leaves people to survive their own actions. He also merges with the spiritual concept of a loving God for good, to help Lily survive the loses she must face. Then, too, Mona so distorts the concept of a superior being that she, or her talking weasel, convinces herself that she is more powerful than Great Spirit. In looking back, the reader might see these characters as prototypes of different ways of looking at a supreme being. I had no intention of writing such, but perhaps I did.
Humanity is depicted as humanity often shows itself to be: hurtful, manipulative, greedy, gentle, loving. One character who borders on being a narcissist comes forward to save the most vulnerable character in the novel. One character has no concept of the role of father and almost kills his son. One character, on the other hand, bribes his boss to insure that his son will have an education that will carry him out of the coalmines. Overall, the characters portray the different personalities that we encounter. We all are different. We all have different reasons for doing what we do. We make mistakes. We have successes. Like the characters in BELOVED MOTHER, we trod along, attempting to survive as best we can.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
The working title of my current project is SUMMER OF NO RAIN. The manuscript is currently with Beta readers. I hope that it will be available late 2019. The story is based on actual events of the late 1960s near Montgomery, Alabama. A clinic for women of color used 1964 Civil Rights monies to establish a program that used sterilization experiments on illiterate and young girls of color. The case against the clinic went to the US Supreme Court in 1974.
In SUMMER OF NO RAIN, the characters, the setting, the events all are fiction. I researched what medicines and procedures were used to sterilize these young girls and let those events become part of a 12-year-old mulatto’s summer. The plot focuses on her socialization failures, her physical decline, and her eventual suicide attempt and the love her mother has for her.
Like BELOVED MOTHER, the tone is serious. It must be, for the procedures were brutal. The outcome was a farce as the reader will see, but I tried to lighten the mood by including events typical of children in 1968 in rural Alabama.
SUMMER OF NO RAIN depicts a grave injustice that many today know nothing about. Unlike when writing BELOVED MOTHER, I had a goal in creating this novella. That goal is to make people aware of the hidden evil man can perpetrate on his fellowman.
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A story of the lives of three women, tightly woven together and surviving the harsh societal environment of an Appalachian mining town in the early to mid-1900s. Two religions contrast with each other—the Cherokee spirits of the native people and the Old Testament God of the white settlers—as each woman struggles to find her place. Love and hate, marriage and adultery, childbirth and abortion, all have their parts to play. Beloved Mother accurately portrays the evilness in humanity, in which the wicked corrupt the innocent to create a vicious cycle of abuse, until one person—with a heart of understanding and forgiveness—has the courage to end it.
