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The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry
The second edition features twelve new poets as well as new work by Donald Justice, T. R. Hummer, Dave Smith, Pattiann Rogers, Andrew Hudgins, Henry Taylor, Gerald Barrax, Rodney Jones, and others. Among the new additions are Mark Jarman, Cathy Smith Bowers, and Charlie Smith. Many teachers realize that the best way to get their students to relate to poetry is to show them poems that contain landscapes and subjects they understand and can identify with. Leon Stokesbury has put together a richly varied collection used in classrooms not only in the South but all over the country as a means of studying the important influence of southern poetry on American literature. With the publication of the second edition of The Made Thing, Stokesbury has marked the end of the twentieth century and the rise to prominence of southern writers. This collection serves as a substantial sampling of poets whose works span more than five decades and who explore the rich personal and cultural history that extends beyond the boundaries of the South.
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First published April 1, 1987
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January 20, 2012Among the University of Arkansas Press' literature offerings, no book provokes as much recognition and argument as THE MADE THING, probably the best-known anthology of contemporary Southern poetry. One of the chief values of this second edition of the book is its addition of 12 new poets, including Vanderbilt's Kate Daniels and Mark Jarman, as well as recent work by Betty Adcock, James Applewhite, David Bottoms, Margaret Gibson, Andrew Hudgins, T.R. Hummer, Rodney Jones, Yusef Koumunyakaa, Dave Smith, and Richard Tillinghast, to mention some of the attendees of Vanderbilt's Millennial Gathering of New Southern Writers last spring.
The anthology's editor, Leon Stokesbury, expected to find that much had changed in Southern poetry since 1987, the year of the anthology's début, but instead he found that much more had remained constant. "Indeed," Stokesbury states in the second edition's preface, "those themes that have always dominated Southern poetry, the past as history, often personal or even elegiac history, and a profoundly close relationship to the natural world, seem more prevalent today."
But an anthology reflects the tastes of its editor(s) as much as it reflects the essential nature of the artists it anthologizes. Stokesbury doesn't limit himself to Southern poets' poems about the South, as evidenced by the inclusion of some of Koumunyakaa's work on the Vietnam War; thus it seems logical to infer that Stokesbury chose the anthology's poets on the basis of excellence and representativeness. Which raises a question: Do the themes he lists above truly define the continuing preoccupations of Southern poetry, or do they merely define prevailing notions of those themes with which Southern poetry should be preoccupied? The latter part of this question bears also on the dominance of narrative poems--first cousin to what Nashville calls "story songs"--in THE MADE THING. Those attempting to define Southern poetry should remember that for every Southern versifier influenced by stories told on the porch (or in the woods or by the stove), there's another who was influenced by the inestimable riches of Southern music, and yet another who was influenced by the silence that was long considered the proper state for white ladies and African Americans. Most Southern writers are influenced by all three.
Broadening the established definition of Southern poetry doesn't mean surrendering to the armies of Political Correctness. It simply means, in practical terms, that even the most partisan Dixie reader realizes the problem of lazily continuing to limn regional essence in terms of snake handlers, Mama, Elvis, good old boys, wisteria, grits, belles, strip malls, fishing, iced tea, Baptist preachers, squirrels perched on dead logs, kitchen chatter, and--of course--the Land. It means that even the most confirmed story-hound tires when linear narrative becomes a tic, when anecdote becomes a facile, reflexive means of reporting material rather than a path to transforming real or imagined experience. This path demands discovery and the willingness to veer off course, and thus Faulkner remains Southern literature's chief exemplar. Indeed, the Mississippian's genius lies partly in his stubborn failure to adhere to conventional narrative form--he veered, circled, and transposed the present and its past at every opportunity--and his refusal to rely on conventional Southern imagery.
Faulkner, the blues, and that silence mentioned above are the forebears of THE MADE THING's best work; fortunate are the poets represented here by verse that busts the mold and thereby kicks a little Parnassian ass: Andrew Hudgins, Rodney Jones, Koumunyakaa, C.D. Wright, and James Dickey, especially in his middle, voyant period of poems like "Falling" and "The Sheep Child."
If some first-rate Southern poets are ill-served by THE MADE THING, some aren't served at all. Writers whose work would have doubtless enriched and enlivened the anthology include Natasha Tretheway, whose first book, DOMESTIC WORK, will be published next month; expatriates Molly Bendall (AFTER ESTRANGEMENT and DARK SUMMER), and Harryette Mullen (MUSE AND DRUDGE), all of whom draw upon the means by which public discourse--including down-home belle-speak and blues talk--defines and distorts our conceptions of the "feminine"; Patricia Storace, former poetry editor of the PARIS REVIEW; Forrest Hamer, author of CALL AND RESPONSE; David Berman, author of the much-praised ACTUAL AIR and frontman for the Silver Jews; Joe Bolton, whose collected work, published by Arkansas, was reviewed in this column last year; R.T. Smith, whose work riffs energetically in recent issues of the OXFORD AMERICAN and other venues; and last, Eleanor Ross Taylor, one of the South's few women elders in the art and so generally esteemed that her absence here seems particularly glaring. Despite these omissions, this new edition of THE MADE THING gives hope that the door whose sign reads "Southern Poetry--Welcome, Y'all!" will continue to open a little wider with each new generation of Dixie versifiers and editors.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)
The anthology's editor, Leon Stokesbury, expected to find that much had changed in Southern poetry since 1987, the year of the anthology's début, but instead he found that much more had remained constant. "Indeed," Stokesbury states in the second edition's preface, "those themes that have always dominated Southern poetry, the past as history, often personal or even elegiac history, and a profoundly close relationship to the natural world, seem more prevalent today."
But an anthology reflects the tastes of its editor(s) as much as it reflects the essential nature of the artists it anthologizes. Stokesbury doesn't limit himself to Southern poets' poems about the South, as evidenced by the inclusion of some of Koumunyakaa's work on the Vietnam War; thus it seems logical to infer that Stokesbury chose the anthology's poets on the basis of excellence and representativeness. Which raises a question: Do the themes he lists above truly define the continuing preoccupations of Southern poetry, or do they merely define prevailing notions of those themes with which Southern poetry should be preoccupied? The latter part of this question bears also on the dominance of narrative poems--first cousin to what Nashville calls "story songs"--in THE MADE THING. Those attempting to define Southern poetry should remember that for every Southern versifier influenced by stories told on the porch (or in the woods or by the stove), there's another who was influenced by the inestimable riches of Southern music, and yet another who was influenced by the silence that was long considered the proper state for white ladies and African Americans. Most Southern writers are influenced by all three.
Broadening the established definition of Southern poetry doesn't mean surrendering to the armies of Political Correctness. It simply means, in practical terms, that even the most partisan Dixie reader realizes the problem of lazily continuing to limn regional essence in terms of snake handlers, Mama, Elvis, good old boys, wisteria, grits, belles, strip malls, fishing, iced tea, Baptist preachers, squirrels perched on dead logs, kitchen chatter, and--of course--the Land. It means that even the most confirmed story-hound tires when linear narrative becomes a tic, when anecdote becomes a facile, reflexive means of reporting material rather than a path to transforming real or imagined experience. This path demands discovery and the willingness to veer off course, and thus Faulkner remains Southern literature's chief exemplar. Indeed, the Mississippian's genius lies partly in his stubborn failure to adhere to conventional narrative form--he veered, circled, and transposed the present and its past at every opportunity--and his refusal to rely on conventional Southern imagery.
Faulkner, the blues, and that silence mentioned above are the forebears of THE MADE THING's best work; fortunate are the poets represented here by verse that busts the mold and thereby kicks a little Parnassian ass: Andrew Hudgins, Rodney Jones, Koumunyakaa, C.D. Wright, and James Dickey, especially in his middle, voyant period of poems like "Falling" and "The Sheep Child."
If some first-rate Southern poets are ill-served by THE MADE THING, some aren't served at all. Writers whose work would have doubtless enriched and enlivened the anthology include Natasha Tretheway, whose first book, DOMESTIC WORK, will be published next month; expatriates Molly Bendall (AFTER ESTRANGEMENT and DARK SUMMER), and Harryette Mullen (MUSE AND DRUDGE), all of whom draw upon the means by which public discourse--including down-home belle-speak and blues talk--defines and distorts our conceptions of the "feminine"; Patricia Storace, former poetry editor of the PARIS REVIEW; Forrest Hamer, author of CALL AND RESPONSE; David Berman, author of the much-praised ACTUAL AIR and frontman for the Silver Jews; Joe Bolton, whose collected work, published by Arkansas, was reviewed in this column last year; R.T. Smith, whose work riffs energetically in recent issues of the OXFORD AMERICAN and other venues; and last, Eleanor Ross Taylor, one of the South's few women elders in the art and so generally esteemed that her absence here seems particularly glaring. Despite these omissions, this new edition of THE MADE THING gives hope that the door whose sign reads "Southern Poetry--Welcome, Y'all!" will continue to open a little wider with each new generation of Dixie versifiers and editors.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)
September 21, 2021
4 ⭐️ Great selection of contemporary poets associated with the American South. It strikes me as odd that only three of the 66 anthologized Southern poets are Black. After reading all the poems I still cannot not easily define "Southern poetry," but I appreciate the focus on writers of a particular region of the U.S. The editor Leon Stokesbury notes in the preface to the second edition that several new poets have been added (to the 1987 first edition) who are "clearly Southern voices." I will re-read these selections again to determine what makes them distinctly Southern. Also helpful is Stokebury's note in the preface that "themes that have always dominated Southern poetry, the past as history, often personal or even elegiac history, and a profoundly close relationship to the natural world, seem more prevalent today" (from those that came before). As always, I simply enjoy discovering poets who are new to me and who speak to my interests, regardless of their geo-cultural identity.
I especially enjoyed poems by Cathy Smith Bowers, George Garrett, Donald Justice, Judson Mitcham, Naomi Shibab Nye, Pattiann Rogers, Gibbons Ruark, Henry Taylor, Ellen Bryan Voigt, Robert Penn Warren, Miller Williams and Charles Wright. I would like to read their poems again and seek out their own books.
I especially enjoyed poems by Cathy Smith Bowers, George Garrett, Donald Justice, Judson Mitcham, Naomi Shibab Nye, Pattiann Rogers, Gibbons Ruark, Henry Taylor, Ellen Bryan Voigt, Robert Penn Warren, Miller Williams and Charles Wright. I would like to read their poems again and seek out their own books.
December 2, 2022
With so many poets included, this was obviously a mixed bag, but when it was good it was GOOD. Found a few of my new favorite poems.
Particularly enjoyed the poems by James Applewhite, Wendell Berry, Fred Chappell, Susan Ludvigson, Walter McDonald, Paula Rankin, and Pattiann Rogers.
My absolute favorite poems were:
At the Swings (Henry Taylor)
To Know the Dark (Wendell Berry)
The Peace of Wild Things (Wendell Berry)
My Mother Shoots the Breeze (Fred Chappell)
The Necessity of Falling (William Mills)
Particularly enjoyed the poems by James Applewhite, Wendell Berry, Fred Chappell, Susan Ludvigson, Walter McDonald, Paula Rankin, and Pattiann Rogers.
My absolute favorite poems were:
At the Swings (Henry Taylor)
To Know the Dark (Wendell Berry)
The Peace of Wild Things (Wendell Berry)
My Mother Shoots the Breeze (Fred Chappell)
The Necessity of Falling (William Mills)
May 17, 2014
Southern poetry is synonymous with a realistic view of a world, a world sometimes hard and harsh as the lives of many of its poets. This anthology, now in its second edition, provides one of the finest resources for people interested in contemporary poetry.
Dr. Leon Stokesbury, long-time English professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, includes an expanded list of poets numbering sixty-six, twelve more than in the 1987 edition. Several poets from the first edition did not make the current volume. No particular school or style of poetry writing dominates, and the poems are as varied as the poets themselves.
Each author's photograph is included, as well as a short biography; the numbers of poems range from three to eight per poet. Some of America's greatest contemporary poets are anthologized, Miller Williams, Wendell Berry, James Dickey, Fred Chappell, Dave Smith, George Garrett, Henry Taylor, David Bottoms, John Stone, Alice Walker, Donald Justice, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Robert Penn Warren.
With The Made Thing, Stokesbury has given readers a fine resource useful for reflection, enjoyment, and even a tool for the poet's desk. Spending time reading this collection is a joy for lovers of poetry and lovers of the South.
--Reviewed by Dayne Sherman, author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel and Zion: A Novel (coming soon)
Dr. Leon Stokesbury, long-time English professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, includes an expanded list of poets numbering sixty-six, twelve more than in the 1987 edition. Several poets from the first edition did not make the current volume. No particular school or style of poetry writing dominates, and the poems are as varied as the poets themselves.
Each author's photograph is included, as well as a short biography; the numbers of poems range from three to eight per poet. Some of America's greatest contemporary poets are anthologized, Miller Williams, Wendell Berry, James Dickey, Fred Chappell, Dave Smith, George Garrett, Henry Taylor, David Bottoms, John Stone, Alice Walker, Donald Justice, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Robert Penn Warren.
With The Made Thing, Stokesbury has given readers a fine resource useful for reflection, enjoyment, and even a tool for the poet's desk. Spending time reading this collection is a joy for lovers of poetry and lovers of the South.
--Reviewed by Dayne Sherman, author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: A Novel and Zion: A Novel (coming soon)
July 29, 2013
A decent, but not great anthology of Southern poetry. Any anthology worth looking at is going to be at least a little personal--you need the firm opinions of an editor to choose and sort and cull from all the poems published every year. This one focuses too specifically on the Arkansas poets that the editor seems to be familiar with.
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