The Gone And The Going Away

by Maurice Manning

Welcome to “Fog Town Holler,” Pulitzer Prize finalist Maurice Manning’s glorious rendering of a landscape not unlike his native Kentucky. Conjuring this mythical place from his own roots and memories — not unlike E. A. Robinson’s Tilbury Town or Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County — Manning celebrates and echoes the voices and lives of his beloved hill people.

In Fog Town Holler men have “funny names,” like Tiny Too and Eula Loom. A fox is known as Redleg Johnny. A neighbor issues a complaint against an early-rising rooster; another lives in the chicken coop. “Lawse,” a woman exclaims, “the sun can’t hardly find this place!” But they feel the Lord watching, always, as the green water of Shoestring Branch winds its way through hillbilly haunts and memories.

The real world no longer resembles the one brought so vividly to life in the poems in these pages, but through his meditations on his boyhood home, Manning is able to recapture what was lost and still, yet, move beyond it. He brings light to this place the sun can’t find and brings a lost world beautifully, magically, once again into our present.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

MAURICE MANNING, the author of four collections of poetry, was awarded the 2009 Hanes Poetry Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Manning, a former writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, teaches at Indiana University and Warren Wilson College.

Reviews

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the values of Manning's poems about the mythical Fog Town Holler, aside from their obvious music, is that they allow a reader like me to revisit similar roots as the poet recalls his past. Manning brings back up the gone world he fondly remembers, a world where farmers wear fedoras with their overalls, where they trudge behind a mule and a plow turning up truth in a dry field at the end of a dirt road. He reimagines his boyhood where his presence on a hill might've tainted the natural beauty of the sumac leaf but where there was still real joy in the everyday:

And danged if I didn't
eat the hell out of

some collards. I even hollered,
Hiya, big woman! No telling

what all I cooked up
next I was so happy.

Mostly these poems are lit by the people he remembers. He laments their going away and their taking his treasured boyhood with them. But his poems sing them bathed in sunlight and participants in the nature which animated the holler of his lost world.

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of poetic evocations of rural life. Manning is writing as a Kentuckian so there are certain tics that are present in other southern poetry that are nowhere to be found in this collection but in that sense its a unique collection; it manages to be rural without being so typically American. Manning really excels at free form poetry and his longer poems tended to be better. All in all a very good collection.

[SARIT · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gone and the Going Away, dwells on a Kentucky of yore, one that is more rural and neighborly and teetering on disappearance. He may get a little too close to romanticizing the poor and uneducated, the poems contain enough native wit to keep them on track . His poems are painting vivid pictures and views, strange names and peoples of Kentucky country sprinkle with creation and god flavoers. I introduce you all to the main narrative poem:

"The world I know keeps going farther

and farther away. I cannot keep it

from going, though I love it still,

and yet, with darker joy. The dark

because that world was soaked in sadness;

the joy because I understood

and lived there, too. It’s that simple,

sometimes love can stay in the heart

of such a time and place and turn

to fiercer love, to love beyond

all understanding of the name.

Not really simple, no. The world

I live in now feels flattened out;

it isn’t simple or difficult,

it is a world of wanting more,

but tired of having all it has.

But I won’t condemn that predicament:

I’m not a prophet, not yet. Perhaps I knew

this would happen, a removal in time from time,

but I didn’t know it would happen so soon,

one world replaced by a later world

I don’t belong to. Yet still, today,

while walking in the woods, I remembered

the first one, the one I’m from. I remembered

a boy, dear Lord forgive him, who killed

the neighbor’s kittens. One by one,

he hung them from a clothesline until

they slumped like a row of wet socks.

I thought about that day, a mean one,

about the boy whose mother beat him

with a soup ladle, whose father got drunk

and run over by a coal train—

and then I had a larger thought,

and more disturbing: I wondered where

did all the old time people go?

Who’s hidden them away and why?

The country poor are hard to count,

but easy to blame for the way they live,

a dog chained to a wooden box,

a junk-pile heaped in the yard, a twist

of smoke rising from a barrel.

Surely they know better. Surely

we all do always, but don’t. I knew

a boy named Billy Oglesby

who carried a pistol in his boot.

He married a girl and pretty soon

they had a baby and started going

to this hollering church and got convinced

the baby had a demon in it.

So they burned the baby’s toys and clothes

in their patch of yard and locked the baby

in a shed for three days and prayed

the demon out. And it worked, the praying.

Is it hope or hopelessness we see

in this little scene, the burn-pile flecked

with bits of color, but mostly ash?

I don’t know, but part of me is glad

it happened. I don’t know why.

I recognize it, I see it all;

it doesn’t hide the human truth.

O, woman who washed your worn clothes

in a bucket on the stove, old man

who napped in the yard with the goat who ate

the buttons off your shirt, where are

you now? Has some peace found you? And you,

Agnes Caldwell, you woe-bent digger

of mountain graves, O what became

of you and the weary songs you sang?

Does some still water run beside

you now? O, will you keep a place

for me beside you in the grass?

You, Vicey. You, Peanut. You, Hopper. You, Red."

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Gone and the Going Away" is a solid collection of poems from Maurice Manning, and my first read from the respective poet. I have to say what impressed me most about this particular set of poems were the distinct voice and theme of remembrance that colored the assortment, both long and short, in this compilation. Manning creates a fictional place in Kentucky called Fog Town Holler, with a common narrator walking through his experiences and relationships.

I had a number of poems that I personally liked in this collection - one of which was "The Slate" where it introduced a number of very interesting characters - Tiny, Tiny Too (Double T), Honey, and Birdie - giving them all a vivid portrayal in a retrospect that I couldn't help but follow along with the narrator "when [he] was just a scratch of a boy". Another was "The Transfiguration of a Certain Plowman" - where the narrator recalls the memory of a man who used to plow on the lands, but the lands keep changing and carrying on long past his passing, and the narrator reflects that even as his day hasn't ended, eventually it will, and life goes on. Beautifully written imagery as evidenced in this particular passage from that poem:

"So I go to the broken garden to be
accused and broken down and changed —
that day I lay down in the grass
and dreamed. The bugs crawled over me,
and a roan-colored moth lit
on my outstretched hand and winked
like an eye and blinked, staring at all
I was and wasn’t..."

I loved "The Fogtown School of Thought" for its attention to detail in nature, as well as "The Shadow Branch." There's a toggling to be had between memories and details lost to time as well as identities here, but I'll admit that not all of the poems caught my attention, even in their brevity. Manning has a way with words, and when he conjures an image, he does it quite well, but some of the shorter poems in this collection, while in the scheme of the theme and in the moment, didn't really impact me as much as the longer ones did. The poem that takes the collection's namesake does a nice job of rounding out some of the sentiments of the speaker and the collective themes in each part. I think it does a great job also showing the lives of the people here - poor, in smaller settings and with simple convictions of place and relation, but I'll admit there did seem to be spots where it didn't engage me as much as I'd hoped. I would recommend it on an overarching note, for the strong thematics and development of its very vivid place, albeit fictional.

Overall score: 3/5

Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley, from the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

[Sherry Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have followed Maurice Manning's career from his first book Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions and I find delight in what he writes. "Delight" in this case doesn't mean there is no darkness in the work. I think it's the job of poetry to delight even as it tears at the very roots of your heart. Manning can do that.

A metaphysical poet in the guise of a fool, a teller of tall tales (a fine old southern tradition), Manning makes you laugh while you cry. As in these first few lines of "The Lord God Made It All: A Boogaloo"

A maker's mind must like making,
and must smile on what it makes,
even if it's treacherous, or frowned upon
by people too polite to feel
the pleasures of the truth and laugh.
The woolly lamb must leap beside
the coarser, leering creature, round
and round they go -- around the Tree.

I take that last sentence as a nod to Blake. But as it speaks of God, these lines also speak of the poet.

And of course the big T Tree puts us in Eden with the original sin.

A boogaloo is dance music, a fusion of Latin rhythms with R&B. ("Bang Bang" and "I Like It Like That.") Which perhaps shows up in

Toward the end of that weeklong stretch,
given the way things looked so far,
perhaps the Lord said, "What the heck,
let's give the fairer one a jiggle!

And then suddenly, from Big Bopper territory, the giggle of the jiggle, we hit a stretch of high poetry.

it's all Creation, from the finest
detail -- how the horse's mane
mirrors the wind to make it show
itself and how the visible wind
is like the tread of water down
a bedrock stream . . .

And so to politics and protest because such bedrock streams as are being destroyed by mountain-top removal mining and other means of exploitation:

God help anyone who can't admire
a woman's jiggle. God help those men
who tear Creation down, who don't
imagine anything, who have
decided not to see the world
as made by mighty hands, those men
who daily stab the miracle.

And then a turn back to metaphysics, as if we ever left it:

And aren't we made to answer Creation,
to call its name when it calls us?
To tremble like the trees, to hum
according to the bees, to bounce
like a flower when the bee arrives,
and, strangely, to bounce again when it leaves."

And there is that jiggle, that lady bounce, redeemed. True the poem is very male (though not, I think, sexist), true it's the same old birds and bees, but made new and, by that last line, made at once a psalm, an ode, and an elegy.

And of course a boogaloo.

[Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was given this book by a friend after we interacted over a poem I had written. Manning is a newer poet on the scene who in his previous book of poetry to this one, "The Common Man", was runner up for the Pulitzer.

I don't know what it takes to write a Pulitzer level book but if "The Common Man" is anything like "The Gone and Going Away" then I see some of the evidence. Manning is a Southern poet, meaning he is writing in colloquial styles that one would consider both "backwoods" - as if you are standing with him at the pit of a roasting pig or a steaming distiller - but also with a "gentlemanly" tone - as if you are on a porch sipping a mint julep. Regardless of the style Manning's poem's are engaging and insightful.

Manning's poetic rhythm for this book is a series of short poems that are a stanza or two with longer poetic stories that are several pages. I imagined reading it is like playing hopscotch as a kid, with quick hops from one square to another followed by the leaning down and grabbing the stone - which takes more time and balance to accomplish - before proceeding. I enjoyed both the "hops" and the "leaning pauses".

This was my first reading of Manning and I have to say I am a fan. I look forward to reading his previous books as well as any new ones to come. I'll be going back to this one to re-read thee gems because I know I am only at the edge of understanding any of them.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's easy to see why this poet has garnered so much praise, as many of his poems are exquisite evocations of place wrought with absolute precision and attention to detail (lexical, grammatical, colloquial, and even historical, though like Faulkner he creates a fictional Southern US place for his characters to inhabit...) He's in solid mastery of his game though still early in his career, and I especially like his shorter poems which compress his otherwise lyrically lengthy stories into tight and powerful meditations on par with poets usually more well known for their brevity (Corman, etc). The only criticism I could level is that some of the poems seem to slide into preciousness at times, but this is rare. I throughly enjoyed this book and its rendering of a fading South.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm no smarty-pants about poetry, but just two lines into the opening poem in this collection, "The Complaint Against Roney Laswell's Rooster," and I knew I was headed for something good.

In its entirety, the book is a song to the old ways and the holler and a life that could include intoxicated evenings spent with The Parson and a dream woman named Big Sookie.

It's a world I expect to dip into every time I need a reminding.

Incidentally, I found these videos of poet Maurice Manning reading some of the poems. They very much enhanced my enjoyment of the poems:

Three Poems
http://youtu.be/9M2GgjUba1M

"The Gone and the Going Away"
http://youtu.be/ynMeDdbBviw

[J.A.A. Purves · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are rather beautiful and I think, this time, that it is because of the book’s melancholy. There is a whole world of local community and folk culture that is dying. Manning obviously feels that it is dying. And he has tried here to preserve a sense of what some of it felt like before mass media pop culture took over.

“... I know the shape of sorrow
and the stillness at the bottom of it,
the first grief plunged down
forever like a root. A voice
has been coming back to me, calling.
There’s something I have to do with my life
in the time that I have left. Come back,
it says, and what you have to do
will start ...”

[Tracy Temples · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Going Away reminds me of my on experiences with a rural farmers and just great country folks. They are a dying breed that are the ones left from the generations raised during the Great Depression. It is a sad that my kids will not know the work ethic of generations gone by. My Granddad grew up hearing stories from his Granddad about the last Civil War Soldiers leaving Middle Tennessee. He told me stories about growing up during the Depression and his War Years in WW2. It is always a true pleasure to have someone reflect fondly on these people and their ways. Maurice Manning is a National Treasure!!!

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a book of poetry based on a fictitious group of people who reside in fictitious Fog Bottom Holler, Kentucky. The characters are not educated and seem to live hard lives but the book focuses on some love, affection and friendship everyone has in their lives. A lot of focus is on nicknames that people call family and friends. Maybe their real names are too repetitive to have much use or identifying a person with a nickname makes them closer to you. Birds and their sounds are a focus as is nature in general. Nature is not feared but one's close friend. Lovely atmospheric poetry.

[Sylvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the book, as I love anything written by Maurice Manning. I love the poem about school and what we ought to teach children. It has been a long time since I read it, but I go back to it again and again.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike his Bucolics, say, the poems in this book vary in length and in tone. Like Bucolics, so many of the poems concern themselves with spirituality, that they
All wind up with that concern. Of the multiple pages poems, "The Hill People" serves as an amazing and dark indictment of American materialism, while "The hour of Power and the Sassafras Tree" serves as a frolicsome depiction of losing virginity. I don't think one can go wrong with a book of Manning's poems.

[Grace Houghton · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book of many voices, concerned with the nature of things - of the landscape, of dreams, of people both imaginary, present, and gone away. easy-going yet deep, with an utterly unpretentious ability to laugh at itself. and just a bit of creepy to balance it out.

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

God help anyone who can't admire
a woman's jiggle. God help those men
who tear Creation down, who don't
imagine anything, who have
decided not to see the world
as made by mighty hands, those men
who daily stab the miracle.

[Rocky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful voice that reaches out from his Kentucky home, inviting the reader to come and sit on the porch at sunset.

[Eric Cyr · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books of poetry I've read. Moving, strange, striking, lovely.

[Angel Parrish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Saved $18 because I Snagged @ the Library!

Let it first be understood that I am NOT a fan of poetry. I grabbed this at the Library for the same reason a person grabs extra produce at the grocery store--trying to add more broccoli in your diet because it's good for you, right? And maybe the store had a sale on broccoli or maybe it was in season and looked good?

My library had a bunch of copies of this, and it looked pretty good. As for the diet...I set a goal to add poetry into my reading diet for one month. Every day I read a few pages of Shakespeare and a few pages from a collection like this one. So with that understood, here is my review:

My opinion of this collection varies greatly from poem to poem. The longer, epic poems--particularly the funny ones, and especially the ones based on dreams--are pretty good. The one about Foot Washing or the one about the End of the River...now those are highly entertaining. And remind me just a tad of Mark Twain who is kind of my hero. Some of the more serious longish poems are okay. They are thoughtful and worth perusing. They make a thoughtful point about growing old or about country living. They are interesting.

Now on the other hand, the short poems that are just 6 or 8 lines long...I gotta tell you...I don't have a CLUE what they mean. As a professional writer, a teacher of English grammar and literature, I find this to be a particular personal character flaw. My brother, however, is the poem whisperer. So I shared them with him. And you know what he said? He said, "I have no idea what that is about." So if you are into existential poetry that looks like, in order to fill a book, a writer simply threw 30 words at a page and left them in whatever order they stuck, then these poems are for you. But if you think that, you know, a poem ought to end with a complete sentence, or a complete thought, or at least contain a complete thought somewhere within those 6 lines....well, you might be expecting a bit much.

I could wax eloquent here as to how this book is the very reason why I both hate poetry and know it is good for me. But you probably quit reading my review back when I compared poetry to broccoli. Let's just say this: I read the whole thing. EVERY word. I ate my vegetables, Mamma. Now can I have some dessert? Maybe a murder mystery?

[William Reichard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read all of Manning's books, and this one is as fine as the rest - narratives that explore Kentucky life and lore. There is the usual "downhome" feel to these poems, and a certain kind of yearning, even a mistiness, for the past. Manning's work has a timeless quality because his narrators aren't trapped by temporal specifics - they could be happening today, they could be taking place a hundred years ago. His voice is clear and strong.

[Cindy Pratt]

I love this book!

[Rita Quillen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need more than 5 stars.... my fave contemporary poet... the most original poet of my lifetime...

[Tresa Rentler · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a poem in this book called "The Very Notion of God as a Clingstone Peach" and that's all you need to know.