Literary Matters - Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

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Neglected Authors Column:Rosanna Warren on Byron Herbert ReeceByron Herbert Reece (1917-1958) is a casualty ofModernism. Timeless even in his own day, this poet andnovelist, born in a log cabin on a farm in the Appalachiansof North Georgia, is almost unknown outside his nativestate. Yet readers anywhere who appreciate FrederickGoddard Tuckerman, Edward Arlington Robinson, EdwardThomas, John Masefield, and Robert Frost, as well astraditional English and Scottish ballads, would findnourishment in Reece’s poems.It is tempting to think of Reece as an American JohnClare. He grew up in a rural poverty as dire as any NorthAmerica can show, and spent his boyhood and mostof his life laboring on the farm to support his parents,both of whom suffered from tuberculosis, a diseaseReece himself eventually contracted. Before enteringelementary school, he was already reading the Bible andThe Pilgrim’s Progress, the two books his family owned.He did manage to attend high school while working on thefarm, and by his late teens was publishing poems in localnewspapers. Encouraged by the high school principal, heattended a local college, Young Harris College, for twoyears, and he clearly put those years to fervent good use,reading widely and beginning to publish in literary journalsbeyond Georgia. The needs of the farm prevented himfrom finishing his formal education. When war broke out,the Army rejected him because of his thinness and theprevalence of TB in his family. From 1939 to 1945, heworked eighteen hours a day on the farm and wrote “atnight.” After that, desperate for money, he interspersed alittle high school teaching, and then college teaching, withhis farm work and writing. In 1954 he spent three months(of Hell, he said) in the state hospital for the tubercular.Two Guggenheim fellowships helped him eke out a living,but his last years were spent in a desperate battle tofinish his third novel, produce new poems, teach, keepthe farm going, and survive his disease. He shot himselfin the spring of 1958 in the faculty apartment of his AlmaMater, Young Harris College, where he had a teachingstint that year. His biographer Bettie Sellers writes that heleft his last stack of student papers, graded, in his deskdrawer. Mozart’s Piano Sonata in D was spinning on therecord player.Reece published four books of poems and twonovels. He was not, in his day, a “neglected author.”Thanks to Jesse Stuart, a farmer-poet from Kentucky whodiscovered a poem of Reece’s in Prairie Schooner, theNew York publisher E.P. Dutton took him on; his work waswidely reviewed, and on the appearance of his novel Bettera Dinner of Herbs and his second book of poems, BowDown in Jericho and Other Poems in 1950, Newsweekpublished a feature article on him. He received awardsfrom the Georgia Writers Association. But the books didn’tsell well enough to support him and his parents, and theawards paid little. His other books of poems are: Balladof the Bones and Other Poems (1945); A Song of Joy andOther Poems (1952); and The Season of Flesh (1955).His second novel, The Hawk and the Sun, also cameout in 1955. Two books have been written about him:Raymond A. Cook’s Mountain Singer: The Life and Legacyof Byron Herbert Reece (1985), and Bettie Sellers’ TheBitter Berry: the Life of Byron Herbert Reece (1992).Within the framework of his traditional metrics, usinga language drawn from the Bible, the Elizabethan poets,and Robinson and Housman (among others), as well asfrom the rich Appalachian oral traditions of song andstorytelling that were natural to him, Reece paces hisspare and sober surprises. He was much praised for hisballads. It is the shorter lyrics that strike my ear, and myheart. The first stanza of “I Am the Dust” is unremarkablyconventional. The second stanza—especially the last fourlines with that vibrating word “traffic”—breaks into private,eerie, and original space.I Am the DustI am the dust made animate,Earth’s singer given syllables,As Homer of an elder date.For sorrow, joy and love and hateAnd greetings and farewells.Too soon I too shall be as quietAs they who know not how the nightIs dark nor how the day is clear,But for a fleeting moment yetI traffic with the alphabetBefore I am anonymousAnd scattered everywhere.“I Go by Ways of Rust and Flame” is beautifullyeconomical even in its repetitiveness, giving a quietsense of a landscape known and lived (that “bent” sky,the roads that “thin at sunset to the air”), as well as thesolitude that seems to have been the essential conditionof this poet.I Go by Ways of Rust and FlameI go by ways of rust and flameBeneath the bent and lonely sky;Behind me on the ways I cameI see the hedges lying bare,But neither question nor reply.LITERARY MATTERS | VOLUME 3.4 | YEAR-END 2010 14
A solitary thing am IUpon the roads of rust and flameThat thin at sunset to the air.I call upon no word nor name,And neither question nor replyBut walk alone as all men mustUpon the roads of flame and rust.Reece was, by all accounts, a lonely and taciturnman, though he maintained literary friendships throughcorrespondence. But in the classroom, he lit up, fired bythe joy he took in the poems he taught. The poem “Inthe Corridor,” from his last collection, gives a poignantglimpse of the solitudes of teacher and student meeting—however fitfully—in the music of Herrick.In the CorridorClouds I remember, a day all dull and dun;The sun may have shone at the first for a little space,I do not remember. Clouds I remember, and oneFigure departing, one grave unsmiling face.The voice reading ceased at the sound of the bellAnd I closed the ponderous book on Herrick’s song,Caught still in the youthful music, caught in the spellOf its sound on a youthful tongue.The door of that classroom fronts an open hallAnd one may go by the way he came or not;But this was the eve of holiday for allAnd from my desk I followed the laughing lot.Just where the hallway opens upon the streetOne looked back for a moment, as if to findWhether my gaze sought his, and, should they meet,Whether my mindWas still for the ageless music of Herrick, orFor the aging day, or the book,Or the face at the end of the corridorAnd its fleeting backward look.Reprinted with permission from Cherokee Publishing Company. a- Rosanna Warren is grateful to Harry Howard, amember of ALSCW, for introducing her to Reece’s work.In Memoriam: Brent Joseph WellsBy Adelaide RussoBrent Joseph Wells became a member of the ALSCWin March 2010. Brent loved literature and philosophy:mystic poets from Rumi to Byron; thinkers from Plato toMalraux. The name of Brent’s agency, Levity Creative,described him exactly. He started his firm after a verysuccessful career in California and a stint workingfor Louisiana State University. The CEO of the LSUFoundation had recognized his talents as a graphicdesigner, photographer, writer, and source of ideas byhiring him as the Creative Director for the LSU AlumniAssociation.Brent’s beautiful wife Sondra once told me a storythat was emblematic of his incredible generosity. “CountryCorner” is a newsstand in Baton Rouge that sells friedchicken and crawfish. One chilly day Brent saw a homelessman loitering in front of the store. The man was shirtless.Brent took off his shirt and gave it to the stranger. Hiswife was astonished by this behavior, until her husbandreminded her that he had a closet full of shirts at homeand this man did not even have one, let alone a home.The first time I met Brent Joseph Wells, I felt as ifI had met someone whom I had known for years. Thatsense of kinship recognized was a source of enormousconsolation. My new friend had such a very special spirit.He generously offered his talents to the ComparativeLiterature Program at LSU, which was in peril, and tothe Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers.Thanks to Brent, we have wonderful photos of the ALSCWMarch meeting in Baton Rouge. When I left Baton Rougeto spend the month of June in France, I was lookingforward to coming back to share a festive dinner with mynew friends. Unfortunately, I re-crossed the Atlantic witha heavy heart. A thoughtful friend, the painter Kelli ScottKelley, had sent me the terrible news that Brent had beenin a serious automobile accident. I could hardly thinkof anything else during that journey and tried to put mythoughts to paper. I recalled my first meeting with Brentafter a Baton Rouge Symphony Great Performers concertfeaturing the trumpeter Chris Botti. I started with thesewords: “The Perfect Stranger.” Had Conrad not alreadytaken the title “The Secret Sharer” I would have usedthose words too.We were waiting for wine in a crowded reception atthe bar of the Capitol House Hilton Hotel, made famousby Huey Long who kept a suite of rooms there. A tall wellbuiltman offered to get the indifferent server’s attentionand he did. He was looking for a telephone. His armswere encumbered by two bags filled with the season’sfirst strawberries - Ponchatoula strawberries. He told mehe had been walking all day, the strawberries bought onimpulse at the farmers’ market. His first gesture was toshare them. I still taste the sweetness of that fruit, itsflavor deepened by the walking, and see the startling blue(continued on page 17)LITERARY MATTERS | VOLUME 3.4 | YEAR-END 2010 15
Page 1 and 2: Literary MattersaTHE NEWSLETTER OF
Page 3 and 4: From The Editor (continued from pag
Page 6 and 7: ecognition that the ends of the mat
Page 8 and 9: Local Meeting Boston: BasileOctober
Page 10 and 11: Warren Funds VSC Fellowship2010-201
Page 12 and 13: Matt ConnollyKathie DeMerittBoston
Page 16 and 17: Portrait of a Donor: Francis O’Ne
Page 18 and 19: Poems by Brent Joseph WellsRead at
Page 20 and 21: he remained, I should still continu
Page 22 and 23: when a rattlesnake bites Jim, Huck

Literary Matters - Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

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