Faulkner’s South
Reflections on William Faulkner and the literary traditions of the American South, featuring pieces by Marvyn Petrucci, Mary F. Whiteside, and Annette Sisson.
TRANSCRIPT
September 25 is the 128th anniversary of William Faulkner’s birth. He’s one of the most influential writers of Southern Literature and for that matter, American literature in general. His novels and short stories take place in Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, a place he made up that’s very similar to the area where he grew up. His stories and novels explore themes of familial and southern identities. On this episode of Burning Bright, some pieces by southern writers that keep Faulkner’s world alive today.
Marvyn Petrucci’s from Alabama. Here’s his poem, which he says was stitched together from images of his childhood and family, “Joining the Salvation Army.”
My father stands, back in my biography,
a belt in his hand, about to teach me a lesson.
He teaches me duck, dodge, lie like a rug, things
he taught my mother. We hug when he heaves
the Easter ham through the window. I am nine.
I call nine-one-one. He howls, swears he’ll kill
us. The cops crack him good, then throw him,
a poorly packed duffel bag, into the wagon.
Captain Silas puts his hand in a cashbox, buys us
a night away from the house. Curtain-less windows,
light from a streetlamp, a radiator hissing; a room in
a flop-joint beats mine at home, knowing he isn’t
coming up there you little son-of-a-bitch.
From Passager’s 2011 Poetry Contest issue, “Joining the Salvation Army” by Marvyn Petrucci.
William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying, follows a rural family, the Bundrens, as they travel with the mother’s casket to the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, focusing on the death and decay in the Southern Landscape. Here’s an excerpt from a journal entry by Texas writer Mary F. Whiteside about small rural cemeteries from Passager’s anthology Keeping Time: 150 Years of Journal Writing.
Small rural burying grounds dot the mountains and hollows of Appalachia (including West Virginia, the home of my parents and grandparents), often in the same areas where coal companies continue their destructive practices of mountaintop removal mining. Greed drives people and businesses to such ruinous practices.
Imagine ignoring something as sacred to rural communities and to society in general as cemeteries. I wonder about the small family cemetery on the hill behind my mother’s “home place” in Floggy Meadow, WV. That old cemetery was located on the edge of a hill up behind the house, in a pasture used by my grandfather for his mules and cows. Surrounded by an old white fence, protected by a few trees, the cemetery captivated me. I liked to go up there and sit among the stone markers, always wondering who the people were who were buried.
Nell, my mother’s favorite sister (the eldest sister, who had died in 1921 when my mother was 13), was buried there. Years later Nell was moved to the family plot in the Mannington, WV Cemetery. I was at grandpa’s the day Nell was to be moved. I was excited. I wanted to see inside the casket. I had all kinds of ideas about what would be there. But, when the mules pulled the wagon down, all I saw was a big gray vault.
An excerpt from Mary F. Whiteside’s handwritten journal entry, part of Passager’s 2009 anthology Keeping Time: 150 Years of Journal Writing.
One of the things William Faulkner focused on and brought to life in his writing was nature. Tennessee writer Annette Sisson says that she always felt the connection between the sounds of the birds that sang right outside her door and the familial dynamics within the house. From Passager’s Winter 2024 issue, Annette Sisson’s “Threadbare.”
Like milk pouring from a glass
bottle, the mourning dove’s
velvet coo summons
my childhood in a mellow town
still tying off
its long seam of sleep.
Bedroom windows open
to the tang of cut grass,
tender violets, white-
tufted clover. Bumblebees
throb, thorns bristle
in sidewalk cracks
but I don’t heed their stings
or stabs. In a later house
on three acres of field
meted out in fabric swatches,
we snap annual photos
beside the boulder in the backyard,
my brother tends his first
monarch chrysalis, my mother’s
second cancer shrouds
the windowpanes of my room.
When I add morning dove
to our list of bird sightings,
Mom apprises me of the missing u.
I hear its muffled call –
not velvet, but thread unraveling.
Annette Sisson’s poem “Threadbare.”
Three pieces by Southern writers that have continued Faulkner’s legacy of writing about nature and family.
To buy Passager’s 2009 anthology visit this link: Keeping Time: 150 Years of Journal Writing.
To subscribe to, donate to, or learn more about Passager and its commitment to older writers, visit passagerbooks.com. Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.
Special thanks to University of the South intern Eleanor Yarbrough for researching, writing, and helping edit this episode of Burning Bright.
For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Johnny, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
