What do you think?
Rate this book
Redneck Bouquet
Jeff Mann is a defiant voice in Appalachian literature. His poems, provocative and beloved, are grounded in West Virginia's mountains, his adoration for the region's culture, and the frisson of passion between men. Redneck Bouquet, his new collection, has the poet seeking out sweet donuts and bringing home a lonely man, shucking flannels and boots. In another poem, Mann dwells on the scent of someone else in a lover's moustache. These sumptuous verses reflect the commonplace and concupiscent joys of rural America.
- GenresPoetry
103 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2020
17 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Mann
105 books89 followersJeff Mann’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Laurel Review and The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; two full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine and On the Tongue; a collection of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear; a book of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men; and a short fiction volume, A History of Barbed Wire, which won a Lambda Literary Award. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 19, 2020
What a fantastically fierce collection of poems. One knows it will be something special from the essay which opens this collection, “Trounced by Princess Puppy: On Being A Gay Writer In Appalachia.” This sadly hilarious and farcical tale, with its meditation on beauty and justice and concluding sentence – “It is [an] exhilarating unity – to stand with one’s clan, intractable queers past and present – and it is a heady privilege – to be part of progress in whatever way circumstances allow” – foreshadows the poet’s voice as it ranges across themes of love, lust, clan, revenge, the natural world and its destruction by humans, and really good food and drink, in the 59 poems divided into four sections.
Section One opens with “The Gay Redneck Devours Draper Mercantile. ” As Marc Harshman (Poet Laureate of West Virginia) notes on the back cover, it contains these poignant lines : “…here in the hills/I still belong. Here, I’m safe. Here, I’m home./ Here one day, may all I am be welcome.”
Section Two finds the poet lusting after pie and hot young men, dismissing Narcissus, and sending old ladies bent on a Christian visit packing with blunt albeit polite Southern manners (“I’m sorry ma’am/…but I’m a homosexual and a pagan and I really want/nothing to do with Christianity.” The poet asks, and answers, “…Really,/Whose world do they think this is?.../…Sweet, silvery ladies, wives/of a long dead god, my body will do what it pleases.”
Section Three opens with “ ‘Where Will You Spend Eternity?’ “ Prompted by the “horsefly, sweat-bee” of a Christian pamphlet tucked under a windshield wiper at a rest stop and flapping down the next stretch of highway, the poet contemplates the Paradises of Domesticity, Justice, and Desire. Domesticity: “Let me and John sip scotch and lounge by the fire,/bread rise, beef stew simmer, pear leaves/fill November’s windows, bearing the ruddy/ textures of mountain dawn.” Desire: “where every man I want/lies down for me. Let the country boys unpeel/their flannel shirts, pull off their cowboy boots, their/inopportune heterosexuality.” Justice: oh, Justice. Politicians and coal company executives are daily fed a foul communion of “bread crumbs mixed with coal dust, stained with wine/and sweet rain water collecting in slurry ponds”; daily entombed in an equally fitting “overburden” where still more misery awaits; and each day renewed as was Prometheus. May I say, this coal miner’s daughter from Appalachia experienced quite the frisson of vicarious imagined vengeance joy, imagined vengeance joy being one of Mann’s many strengths. It almost makes up for the answer the poet finds to the question “What then is damned?” I will not tell it here, as it would spoil the poem’s power. Section Three also contains “Gallery, Virginia Tech,” a heartwrenching portrait of queer Appalachian youth, ending with Mann’s fervent prayer both that he may be the “ferocious/father totemic bear” and that this “one prayer/be not selfish and wasted/but selfless and fulfilled.”
Section Four contains the very fine documentary lament “Rainbow”; “Hemlock” which connects our losses to the losses in the natural world; and “John’s Garden,” a sad and loving poem to the poet’s “Disheartened Gardener”. Here the poet says “Love’s either/or: poetry or longevity,” and yet says to his Gardener “Not my muse? Count your blessings.” Hearkening back to “ ‘Where Will You Spend Eternity?’ “ perhaps we and the Gardener are meant to accept that this earthly Paradise of Domesticity is, if not sufficient, then certainly valuable and worthwhile. The section, and book, concludes with “Redneck Bouquet (for John).” Here the defiant poet stakes his claim, as thistles do, to “live as I please/…[to] grow where/it is isolate and free.”
It is certainly the case that this collection of poems will be of interest and value to LGBTQ people in Appalachia, especially gay men. Mann notes in the opening essay, “To be both queer and regional…is to be doubly limited in scope, twice as dismissible….Who, in other words, wants to read about hillbillies and queers?” I suggest that anyone should. First, because if you are a human, nothing human should be alien to you, as the saying goes. Okay, that should be sufficient. As a straight married woman from Appalachia living in one of the urban centers Mann has rejected in favor of building a life for himself in his beloved mountains, I find so much in these poems that speaks to me. The eternal questions of beauty and justice, love and lust, what makes a life good and worth living, lamentations over lost loves, lost loved ones, losses in the natural world – these are all illuminated as well, and perhaps often better, by a gay male poet in Appalachia than one more urban poet, even a fashionable urban gay poet (though let us have more of those, too.)
You will find in these poems much to contemplate about the human condition; you will find humor; you will find yourself wanting to pour some red wine and cook up a mess of greens after reading about a “huge bouquet of chard: orange, red,/and purple stems, the leaves like elephant ears,/glossy green flags, leather wings/scalloped at the edge.” Perfect pairing with these poems. Go forth and read.
Section One opens with “The Gay Redneck Devours Draper Mercantile. ” As Marc Harshman (Poet Laureate of West Virginia) notes on the back cover, it contains these poignant lines : “…here in the hills/I still belong. Here, I’m safe. Here, I’m home./ Here one day, may all I am be welcome.”
Section Two finds the poet lusting after pie and hot young men, dismissing Narcissus, and sending old ladies bent on a Christian visit packing with blunt albeit polite Southern manners (“I’m sorry ma’am/…but I’m a homosexual and a pagan and I really want/nothing to do with Christianity.” The poet asks, and answers, “…Really,/Whose world do they think this is?.../…Sweet, silvery ladies, wives/of a long dead god, my body will do what it pleases.”
Section Three opens with “ ‘Where Will You Spend Eternity?’ “ Prompted by the “horsefly, sweat-bee” of a Christian pamphlet tucked under a windshield wiper at a rest stop and flapping down the next stretch of highway, the poet contemplates the Paradises of Domesticity, Justice, and Desire. Domesticity: “Let me and John sip scotch and lounge by the fire,/bread rise, beef stew simmer, pear leaves/fill November’s windows, bearing the ruddy/ textures of mountain dawn.” Desire: “where every man I want/lies down for me. Let the country boys unpeel/their flannel shirts, pull off their cowboy boots, their/inopportune heterosexuality.” Justice: oh, Justice. Politicians and coal company executives are daily fed a foul communion of “bread crumbs mixed with coal dust, stained with wine/and sweet rain water collecting in slurry ponds”; daily entombed in an equally fitting “overburden” where still more misery awaits; and each day renewed as was Prometheus. May I say, this coal miner’s daughter from Appalachia experienced quite the frisson of vicarious imagined vengeance joy, imagined vengeance joy being one of Mann’s many strengths. It almost makes up for the answer the poet finds to the question “What then is damned?” I will not tell it here, as it would spoil the poem’s power. Section Three also contains “Gallery, Virginia Tech,” a heartwrenching portrait of queer Appalachian youth, ending with Mann’s fervent prayer both that he may be the “ferocious/father totemic bear” and that this “one prayer/be not selfish and wasted/but selfless and fulfilled.”
Section Four contains the very fine documentary lament “Rainbow”; “Hemlock” which connects our losses to the losses in the natural world; and “John’s Garden,” a sad and loving poem to the poet’s “Disheartened Gardener”. Here the poet says “Love’s either/or: poetry or longevity,” and yet says to his Gardener “Not my muse? Count your blessings.” Hearkening back to “ ‘Where Will You Spend Eternity?’ “ perhaps we and the Gardener are meant to accept that this earthly Paradise of Domesticity is, if not sufficient, then certainly valuable and worthwhile. The section, and book, concludes with “Redneck Bouquet (for John).” Here the defiant poet stakes his claim, as thistles do, to “live as I please/…[to] grow where/it is isolate and free.”
It is certainly the case that this collection of poems will be of interest and value to LGBTQ people in Appalachia, especially gay men. Mann notes in the opening essay, “To be both queer and regional…is to be doubly limited in scope, twice as dismissible….Who, in other words, wants to read about hillbillies and queers?” I suggest that anyone should. First, because if you are a human, nothing human should be alien to you, as the saying goes. Okay, that should be sufficient. As a straight married woman from Appalachia living in one of the urban centers Mann has rejected in favor of building a life for himself in his beloved mountains, I find so much in these poems that speaks to me. The eternal questions of beauty and justice, love and lust, what makes a life good and worth living, lamentations over lost loves, lost loved ones, losses in the natural world – these are all illuminated as well, and perhaps often better, by a gay male poet in Appalachia than one more urban poet, even a fashionable urban gay poet (though let us have more of those, too.)
You will find in these poems much to contemplate about the human condition; you will find humor; you will find yourself wanting to pour some red wine and cook up a mess of greens after reading about a “huge bouquet of chard: orange, red,/and purple stems, the leaves like elephant ears,/glossy green flags, leather wings/scalloped at the edge.” Perfect pairing with these poems. Go forth and read.
January 7, 2022
beautiful work. love jeff mann's writings in general and this is a gorgeous collection.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews