by Caroline Todd

Generally, it’s hard for me to pick favorites. If I’m asked, my “favorite” movie or TV show is bound to be the one I’ve seen most recently. Books, though, are easy: hands down, my favorite is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The quintessential English major answer, I know, but it’s well-loved for a reason – it’s so, so good. Artistically speaking, it’s one of the most gorgeous books I’ll ever read and I come back to it again and again for its language alone. I’ve read it several times now, all in different seasons of my life, and I find more in it to unpack every time I open it. Like Edith Wharton writes in The Age of Innocence, Gatsby never fails to “happen to me all over again.” I lose myself in Fitzgerald’s delicious prose, to be sure, but that’s only half the fun. The most important part is discovering something new, and the purity of feeling I experience in the process, every time I reread it.

I received Gatsby as a Christmas present from my grandmother when I was in ninth grade and I read it for the first time on a plane to New York a few days later. Of course, fifteen-year-old me didn’t really understand what went on in the novel. It went pretty far over my head, as it tends to do. It took another try my junior year of high school to begin to grasp the major themes Fitzgerald presents. But looking back on it, I kept some distance from the narrative for a whole host of reasons – it’s certainly not as simplistic as some high school teachers present it to be. Gatsby is so much more than color symbolism of whites, golds, yellows, and the ever-infamous greens, and that’s difficult to convey to the average sixteen-year-old.

This time around, though, was special. Re-reading the novel in a college classroom this term has enriched my understanding of Gatsby like nothing else could. On the first day of class my professor acknowledged that our reading list included classics like The Sun Also Rises and The Sound and the Fury, which many of us had read before. The important thing to realize, he told us, was that we approach works differently when we re-read them. Obviously that differs with age and the intellectual exposure to literature at a deeper level, but it’s also dependent on what we’re going through at certain points in our lives. After a breakup or a family trauma, for example, the anxiety that marks modernist works like Gatsby feels even more despairing.

Take, for example, what just might be my favorite paragraph I’ve ever read:

When they met again two days later it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and the mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

It’s beautiful, sure, but there’s an underlying sadness to it that sends my heart plummeting all the way to my stomach. Nick Carraway narrates this passage to us after Gatsby realizes Daisy’s voice, one of her most charming features, is “full of money.” The language used to describe their encounter in this passage, ripe with objectification, contrasts wildly from the idealistic terms he uses to describe Gatsby’s love earlier in the novel. I can’t help but think that maybe it’s not Daisy Gatsby loves so much after all, but the idea of the lifestyle, “bright with the bought luxury of star-shine,” she leads, and Nick’s language suggests that that’s what he feels to be the case as well. But ever the tragic hero, Gatsby makes Daisy his “grail” anyway, and he follows his quixotic mission to the grave. And Gatsby’s untimely death suggests that a figure with his level of idealism can’t survive in the twentieth century no matter how hard he tries.

 

Though that’s certainly not a cheerful thought, the best literature is supposed to open us up to the highs and lows of human experience. It makes you think even if it tells you something you don’t want to hear. And Gatsby, all about the inability of Jay Gatsby’s “extraordinary capacity for hope” to survive in a postwar social order, is a 189-page sucker-punch to the gut. I’ve hung my head and ugly-cried over it too many times to count. Sometimes the beauty of Fitzgerald’s language is what gets me. Other times it’s the sheer desperation of Gatsby’s futile quest for Daisy that leaves my chest feeling hollow. Or maybe those first signals of their relationship’s end hit a little too close to home.

No matter where we come from, we bring our own lives to a text similar to the way authors do. The richer our own experiences, the more potential we have to connect with the slice of an author’s life we’re presented with in a text. Reading is more rewarding when we bring something to the table, too. Though I’ve got a year and a half until my college graduation and I’m not in a position to wax philosophical about days gone by, I have been around the block a few more times than the high school version of myself who read The Great Gatsby in AP Language class. Regardless, at a fundamental level, our experiences have just as much to do with the way we read as authors’ intended effects do. And that’s what makes reading so fulfilling. Books like The Great Gatsby stick around because they force us to confront what it means to be human. Because the best literature gets personal.

by Rachel Baker

“I hate poetry.”

“Why?”

“It’s too abstract, I don’t know where to start. I feel like need to read it 100 times before I understand what they’re trying to tell me.”

This interaction with my friend got me thinking about how many times I’ve heard some variation of the phrase, “I hate poetry.” And it’s kind of a lot.

People have given poetry and poets an elusive stigma that is far from reality. Although I enjoy poetry, I too am guilty of this. Poetry is the friend I’ve been afraid to make. Maybe she’s too cool, too smart, too aloof for me, but something has stopped me, a creative writing minor, from ever seriously writing a poem.

The general population does not want to put a lot of effort into a leisure activity like reading. And most poetry does not qualify as a “beach read” discussed in the previous post. However, I do not think poetry is a like a new language that you have to learn in order to appreciate a work.

Before I saw quatrains and iambic tetrameter, I heard a childhood lullaby. A small body curled up in a too big bed, I would ask my dad to tell me a story. He would rattle off fictional encounters with alligators in the sewers beneath the city, stories of his crazy yellow lab who made my grandma’s hair grey, but when all imagination ran out, he would recite rhymes that had somehow been filed into his memory. “Whose Woods These Are” became my favorite request, but most people know the poem as, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I don’t know if I even processed the fact that it rhymed, because to me it was a bedtime story, a sweet melody out of my hero’s mouth. As I drifted off to sleep I was captivated by the images of trees billowing with snow and a small pony stomping its hoof with anticipation. Maybe it was because a snow-filled wood was a rare sight to eyes that had only seen five North Carolina winters. Maybe it was the way my dad spoke, his voice putting on a show, questioning, pausing, low and slow. Maybe it was the alluring quality of isolation, dark and deep woods that knew no bounds. But regardless of the reason, I was enchanted. Robert Frost’s famous repeated lines became the last thing I heard before I entered my dreams.

My love for “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” has little to do with craft and a lot do to with its link to my dad and a time in my life to which I can never return. There is no doubt that the poem is good in a literary sense, but craft does not make the hairs on my arms stand up, or chills trickle down my legs. Poetry is a lot more accessible than most think, and although a lot of great poems contain layered metaphors and require a second reading, not all great poems have to be complicated. It is often the emotional quality that leaves a lasting impression.

I attended my first poetry reading during the Féile na Bealtaine Music & Arts Festival when I was in Dingle, Ireland. A man standing on the bar welcomed us into “the noble church of the spoken word,” better known as Dick Mack’s Pub. People spilled out the door, and I stood squished between a classmate and a weathered man without any shoes. Suddenly I was five again, in awe of the beautiful words that filled the room. Some poems were read in Irish and some were in English, some gave me chills, and some made me laugh, some took place thousands of years ago, and some took place on a modern day soccer field. I like poetry, because it invites reader or listener interpretation. Standing in that pub I realized that each poem meant something different to the poet.

This April is the 20th anniversary of National Poetry Month, which was inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 as a way to increase awareness and appreciation for poetry. I would encourage everyone to push their poetic bounds this month, read the Poem of the Week or dive into Shenandoah’s archives. Maybe I’ll even write a poem.

by Mansie Hough

Spring Break is rapidly approaching at W&L, which means that booklovers are hunting for the perfect, easygoing vacation novel. One of the most classic ways to relax in that precious week off for so many is to slide into a bathing suit, blend a margarita, and head to the beach or the pool with a book in hand. Blogs and publications try to capitalize on this phenomenon every spring season with a new list of the top 10 “beach reads” from that year. But what exactly constitutes a beach read? It’s one of those amorphous subgenres, like slipstream or absurdism, which you can’t exactly define, but you know them when you see them. Most of the world seems to agree that a beach read is a trashy, throwaway novel that you can easily digest in a few poolside sittings, and has little to no intellectual or artistic value. Like a trip to the beach, these books are supposed to be as entertaining and non-taxing for the reader as possible.

But do summer reads have to be easy? Is there such thing as a “literary beach read,” or does the presence of any literary merit automatically disqualify a book from being considered a beach read? Many of Jane Austen’s works were, during her lifetime, considered tacky romance novels meant for rich housewives to read on the couch. And, as we all know, they are now considered literary classics, and are being taught in the majority of higher educational institutions. So what exactly is a beach read? What are its criteria, and is there a perfectly executed, exemplary beach read out there? Of course, much of this is all relative to your perspective on what “easy” means, and what you are looking to get out of your “relaxing” reading experience. There might be someone out there who takes Finnegans Wake or Infinite Jest to a carefree weekend getaway in The Keys, for all I know. Google “smart beach reads,” and you’ll come up with hundreds of lists basically titled “Summer Beach Reads! But DON’T WORRY, they’re highbrow and not embarrassing.” To get a better idea, let’s take a look at what types of books have been classified as beach reads throughout the past.

• 

  Romance, preferably something involving travel or set in an airy seaside town like Cinque Terra. Based on no research, I would probably say this is the most popular type of “beach read,” and where the category cross references with “chick lit.” Popular novels here span across many centuries, and include the aforementioned Jane Austen crew, Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind, Jane Eyre, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Delirium, Something Borrowed, and anything by Nicholas Sparks, John Green or Sarah Dessen.

• Mysteries and suspense, another popular tote cohabitant with towels and sunglasses. These mysteries usually feature a female protagonist in her 20s or 30s with a dark or depressing past. Other popular elements include visiting the POV of the killer and a sexy detective love interest. A long list of contenders includes Gone Girl, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Jennifer DuBois’ Cartwheel, Tana French’s In the Woods, and Tom Savage’s A Penny for the Hangman. One could also look into genre celebrities like Dan Brown and James Patterson.
• Stories that warn against upper class frivolity and failure. Nothing like sipping on a daiquiri by the pool and watching drama unfold in the Upper East Side, or listening to the Lost Generation lament the deterioration of the American Dream. Novels here include Anna Karenina, This Side of Paradise, Gossip Girl, Kimberly McCreight’s Reconstructing Amelia, Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, and, of course, The Great Gatsby.
• This is, personally, my favorite kind of book to unwind with on vacation: collections of whimsical short stories and memoirs. In her second memoir, Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling jokes with the reader that he or she found the book in the “Stress-Free Summer Beach Reads” section of the store. Of course, there are certainly short stories and memoirs that don’t fit into the beach read category; a lavish Spring Break vacation probably isn’t the most fitting place to read Elie Wiesel’s Night. But you can gleefully dip in and out of David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, BJ Novak’s One More Thing, Aimee Bender’s Willful Creatures, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, and celebrity memoirs such as Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants and Stephen Colbert’s satirical I Am America and So Can You! This Spring Break and summer, I’m hoping to delve deeper into works by Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers, and Kelly Link.

This is where my confusion about what constitutes a beach read begins. I know people who would consider Egan’s work literary—Goon Squad did win a Pulitzer, after all—and yet she is included in some recommended summer reading lists I’ve seen. I’m not saying this means it should be taught in college literature classes, but there is something to be said for a collection that you can enjoy for entertainment value in a more relaxed setting, and then sink your teeth into upon a more devoted rereading. I’d like to see, for example, where a Joyce Carol Oates or Raymond Carver might fall on this spectrum, as I think their stories are entertaining both superficially and on a deeper level. The economical quality of writing that short stories and memoirs require allows for this cross section of literary and popular fiction. So, to answer my own question, I say yes, there is such a thing as a “literary beach read.” Now, I say this hesitantly and at the mercy of those who are more well read and educated on literary fiction than I am, and I can see reasons why someone might disagree with me.

What do you think? Whether you think I’m crazy or you agree, I hope you can find the perfect story to dive into (or bask in) this coming Spring Break.

by Claire Sbardella

In in her poem “Miss July Grows Older,” Margaret Atwood explores the process of aging and its impact on sexual attraction. Throughout this poem she comes to the realization that although she regrets the loss of her youthful charms, her life now is more fulfilling and well rounded. As one of this poem’s themes, Atwood professes a very jaded perspective on sex and dating, an effect only compounded by her cheeky and sarcastic tone. For her, sex is a pastime for the youth, something to outgrow “like a shrunk dress” as one matures. However, Atwood’s criticism less about sex and more about the men she does it with. In today’s culture, women are less stigmatized for engaging in sex, but the pleasure they gain from it tends to be far less than that derived by men. Atwood’s poem mirrors this dissatisfaction.

“A man writes me, requesting true-life stories / about bad sex…. / I never had any” (31-32, 39). Rather, men’s lack of consideration concerns Miss July. From the lack of the romantic “the absence of flowers” to power abuse “the death threats” to mundane annoyances “the eating habits at breakfast,” men fail to fulfill her expectations. This is mirrored in the article by Rebecca Traister, “The Game is Rigged” which she published in in a subsection of the NY Magazine website, “The Cut.” In this article, Traister discusses how consensual sex can still be joyless and disappointing for the women participating. Feminist discourse, the article argues, should not just cover the bounds of consent, but also focus on how women’s pleasure becomes overshadowed by the social expectation that they perform solely for the male (Traister 2015). The letter the man writes to Miss July, asking for these personal stories, illustrates a similar thoughtlessness to the men who fail to consider women during intercourse. The place where he found her name is “an old calendar, / the photo that’s mostly bum and daisies” (34). The man has written to someone he knows nothing about, to ask an invasive question. The calendar picture no longer represents her.

However, Miss July sees the coquettishness of her old days as something distant. In the first half of the poem she seems very ambivalent about her shift into middle age, “you think your mouth is the size is was. / You pretend not to care” (10-11). She remembers her days as an ingénue, when her “skin had the golden slick of fresh-spread margarine” and she dressed to impress men (36). However, with that change comes a greater appreciation of nature, of slowing down and savoring life “Now there are more of me…. / what you get is no longer / what you see” (68-69). This multiplicity suggests that she now sees herself as more than just a pretty flirt. Her looks now belie her personality, and her self-assurance has increased despite, or perhaps because of, her poor relationships with men.

Atwood’s poem mirrors some real-world problems that deal with communication during sex and the power imbalance between men and women. She focuses on the situations around sex and the disillusionment it gave her. The article focuses on how the power imbalance leads to the fact that a man’s pleasure dictates when the situation ends, and not the woman’s satisfaction. Feminism has made great strides in creating a more equal dynamic between men and women. However, much must be done before both sexes can stand on equal footing with each other.

A few years back I grew weary of the themed poetry anthologies, many published by university presses, some fascinating, but others not. Their themes were love or violence, race or place, this or that, but I often closed the covers wondering how many drum solos I could stand. In service of fair disclosure, I was asked to contribute poems to some of those collections, and even when I hesitated, I never wound up refusing. About the new Monticello in Mind volume, which I’ve just read, I do not have that weary feeling. In fact, I’m excited about it. The subtitle is Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson, and complicated as our third president and his legacy are, I feel a refreshing wind blowing through most of the poems, even when their considerations and revelations are not cause for jubilation. Inconsistent and contradictory as he was on some matters, enlightened angel and red-headed devil that he could be, Jefferson was almost always provocative, and the midden of his brain continues to offer odd amulets, wisdom, boldness, risk, quirk and conundrum. He was a man of more than two minds, and to my knowledge one of the most interesting humans since Leonardo. Diplomat, farmer, philosopher, author, anthropologist, inventor, slave owner, secret keeper, fiddler – it’s almost too much for one person to ponder, though fifty people employing their separate sorceries of language can perhaps keep most of the juggler’s balls in the air at once, for a while.

Jefferson once wrote that keeping slaves was like holding a wolf by its ears. You don’t really want to hold on, but neither are you sure you want to let go. Maybe Jefferson was himself a kind of wolf, and we’re still similarly flummoxed as the metaphorical wolver was. Even the least forgiving might have trouble dismissing the architect, even the most avid acolyte will struggle with the image of shackles and overseer’s lashes. But editor Lisa Russ Spaar, who often contributes poems and reviews to Shenandoah, is fully aware of the Rubik’s cube of character, and she has found some four dozen poets who have lent their imagination and their craft to bring the Enlightenment’s great conundrum further into the light, even with the shadow still clinging to him.

I can hardly feign objectivity here. I can’t think of a poet who does more to bring her peers’ work into the public forum than Lisa, and she’s done it many times in the pages (and then links) of this journal. And to be fair, I’m one of the contributors to this current enterprise and count myself lucky, but setting this information aside, just open the book at random and read a few poems, then turn to Lisa’s astute and eloquent introduction. I believe the hook will be set, thrash and splash as you like; you will be reeled in.

Also in the interest in transparency, these poems are all, to varying degrees, about a person, a place, a historic time (though most reach toward the present and beyond) evident in lively ways, metaphor corraled, if not leashed. Even in the more extravagantly constructed poems, meaning is sought and achieved, imagery coherent, and everywhere one finds the pleasures of saying – this is a collection to be read aloud, to savor what Donald Hall has called “milktongue,” akin to what Robert Penn Warren called “the tangled glitter of syllables.” In short, I’m a neoclarificationist, and loose ends, fragments coy evasions are seldom what draws me to poems. I can really enjoy scat singing, either from the bandstand or on the page, but these poems seldom glorify the riff and tease (though I do love the lyrical “Hey hullah nonny fiddle honey-child o” in Tess Taylor’s “Graveyard, Monticello” and suspect it of having living roots). Narrative elements are prominent, form – either symmetrical or asymmetrical – is evident, and though humor is present, the poems are not jokes, shaggy dog stories, self-celebrations or the chic nonchalance often appearing in slick magazines.

If this sounds more like a celebration than a review, that’s appropriate. I have asked someone with no dog in the fight to review the anthology soon, no holds barred. The result should be less distracted and more professional, but I do want to tread on the reviewer’s territory a little. The University of Virginia has published Monticello in Mind in a hardback with a splendid dust cover and charges $22.95 for it. The blurbs on the back are deft and persuasive. This book is accessible, and it contains poems which will surprise, delight, perplex, goad and inspire readers. Author bios and brief commentary (by Spaar, who proves a dependable guide to both the place and the verse) follow the Afterward.

Who wrote them? Many, but not all, poets familiar to me: Talvikki Ansel, John Casteen, Claudia Emerson, Robert Hass, Terrance Hayes, Mark Jarman, Jennifer Key (a poem which received a prize from Shenandoah a few years back), Yusef Komunyakaa, Thorpe Moeckel, Chet’la Sebree, Tracy K. Smith, Natasha Trethewey, David Wojahn, Charles Wright, Kevin Young   It’s not fair to stop listing, but these particular authors are stuck in my mind this morning, and I promised our blog editor I’d be less windy here than usual.

Just a sample of the subject matter:, four of the poets have chosen to write about Jefferson’s attempt to create his own New Testament, what Spaar calls “a project somewhat postmodern in its technique of collage and erasure.” He wanted to excise events which confounded his Enlightenment perspective, but he didn’t succeed in banishing the sense of miracle and mystery.

Race, gender, love, empire, a living and working community, power of all stripes – these concerns ripple and surge through the collection. Bees hymn, children explore, artifacts are gathered and disappear and reemerge. Adults contend and one mind strives for a wildness of order. I feel the marvelous place in this book and recommend it, for all the beauty and pain available there. If Jefferson if our wolf, I sometimes want the impossible – to hold him and yet let him go, but about Monticello – estate and book – I feel less ambivalent, as Mary Ann Samyn phrases it at the end of her poem: “History begins to come true as we tell it. / This is the spot where.”

RTS

by Camille Hunt

The literary works of great authors are widely known and generally a bit about their personal lives, but their fates are not usually common knowledge. The brooding, troubled writer stands as a common stereotype, and while in some cases it holds true, many authors led perfectly normal, enjoyable lives. Wikipedia defines the concept of the ‘tortured artist’ as “a stock character and real-life stereotype who is in constant torment due to frustrations with art and other people.” Listed below are a few famous historical writers who undoubtedly fuel the dark stigma that frequently surrounds famous poets, novelists, and playwrights, alternating with a few who dispel it.

•   Oscar Wilde: Died destitute, without many friends, and under mysterious circumstances in Paris at age 46.
• Robert Penn Warren: Died at the age of 84 happy, successful, and as the first poet laureate of the United States.
• Virginia Woolf: Committed suicide at age 59 by filling her pockets with stones and walking into a river near her house to drown herself.
• William Faulkner: A Nobel Prize winner, Faulkner lived happily on his Mississippi farm and died at age 64.
• Ernest Hemingway: Committed suicide at age 61 with a gun.
• James Merrill: Son of investment banker Charles E Merrill, co-founder of the brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, James Merrill grew up extraordinarily wealthy. After winning virtually every literary prize known to man, Merrill died at age 68 of a heart attack while on vacation.
• The Brontë Sisters: All three died young of tuberculosis within less than seven years of each other. Emily died at the age of 30 in 1848, the same year that Wuthering Heights was published. Anne died at age 29 in 1849. Charlotte lived on until 1855, dying at age 38, three weeks before her 39^th
• Henry James: Well-travelled and exceptionally educated in his youth, James became a British socialite. He travelled between Europe and America at various points in his life; though born in the United States, James became a naturalized English citizen in 1915. He died renowned as a great writer of his century at age 72.
• Tennessee Williams: Choked on a bottle cap and died of suffocation. Williams had developed a drug and alcohol problem over the course of a steady decline in his career. By the time of his death, Williams had fallen from the spotlight and into a line of failed productions, never again achieving the same success as he experienced with hits like “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
• Geoffrey Chaucer: Born to an affluent London wine merchant between 1340 and 1344, Chaucer flourished in multiple positions thanks to his father’s connections. He received a life pension from King Edward III of England, and traveled abroad on diplomatic missions. Eventually elected a justice of the peace and member of Parliament and considered today the “Father of English literature,” Chaucer died at age 57, well past the average life expectancy in medieval England.
• Edgar Allen Poe: Death is a mystery (fitting). Poe was found semi-conscious in a gutter, and never regained enough consciousness to explain what happened to him. Theories of how he got there include: beating, cooping, alcohol abuse, carbon monoxide poisoning, heavy metal poisoning, rabies, a brain tumor, the flu, and murder. Died at age 40.
• Harper Lee: Born in Monroeville, Alabama in 1926, Harper Lee wrote beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Lee published her second novel, a sequel to To Kill A Mocking Bird, fifty-five years later. She aided author and childhood friend Truman Capote in writing his blockbuster nonfiction piece, In Cold Blood (1966). Lee died this last month (February 19, 2016) at age 89 after living a quiet life between New York City and her home in Monroeville during which she made frequent and generous donations to charity.
• Truman Capote: Interestingly enough, his final work, Answered Prayers, features Tennessee Williams as a minor character. Answered Prayers, which essentially exposed the inner secrets of Manhattan’s elite and turned most of his high society friends against him, sent him into a tailspin of drug and alcohol abuse, the cause of death. The complete manuscript was never found; Random House published only the 180-some-odd pages that had been previously been released in magazines.

So, must writers, like the Brontë sisters, undergo immense suffering before their works reach the peak of recognition? Or can one, like James Merrill, enjoy a life of privilege and success, only to become just as renowned in the literary world? My list above debunks the common assumption that all history’s most talented writers were tortured, twisted souls. True, some did peak earlier in in their careers, the genius of their works recognized posthumously, but I find the ratio between those authors who found lasting success during their lifetime and those who did not fairly equal.

by Claire Sbardella

Jeannine Hall Gailey, in her book of poetry Becoming the Villainess, casts a modern perspective on woman’s role in the Grimm’s fairy tales and in the Metamorphoses. In most fairy tales, women are evil stepmothers, witches, or rivals. If they do not fill these roles, then they act as beautiful, virginal princesses waiting for husbands. In her book, Jeannine investigates how the adversity endured by the women in fairy tales damages their psyches and forces them into roles that disavow their true natures. This retelling allows these stories to remain fresh to modern female audiences, such as myself, by providing a commentary on gender roles that remains culturally relevant today.

The social pressure for women to dress and act in ways that please men, rather than focusing on their own potential, is the theme of “Little Cinder.” In this poem, the Cinderella tries to act in a way that would please her dead mother and the prince. In doing so she ignores “the flames [she] ignite[s] around [her],” which represent her own burning personality and potential. (l 22). She does not even notice her own power, even when “the kettle and the broom sear in [her] grasp, / snap into fragments,” so consumed she is with thoughts of “the makeover,” of wearing a “size-six heel” and wiping the “grime” off her face so that she can be noticed by the prince (ll 11, 12). The original fairy story only considers Cinderella’s beauty relevant, and this beauty of hers only gets revealed when she dons the ball gown. Her dirty rags and ashy face must go if she wishes to attract the Prince. However, there is a fine line between dressing up for men and appearing vain: too little and she goes unnoticed, too much and she risks becoming like her step-sisters, whose dogged vanity and pursuit of the prince lead them to have their eyes scratched out and their heels cut off. A woman must be virtuous and gorgeous, modest and desirable, in order to win the safety and status that marrying a man provides without suffering repercussions.

The need to appear appealing to men feeds off of another problem: violence against women. The poem “Allerleirauh Reveals Her True Self To The Prince” displays this succinctly. This poem relates the story of a girl who chose to be seen as a lunatic child because her father wanted to marry her. This story has many variants, including “Cap O’ Rushes,” and “The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter.” In these stories, the princess flees her incestuous father and disguises herself, while attempting to reveal herself to the prince she loves. The story interprets as one of a girl seeking to gain healthy, socially accepted union while avoiding unnatural union. Jeannine’s further analysis does not deny this theme, rather it highlights the violence of the girl’s father. The poem mentions that in older versions of the story, the father finds out her disguise and “cuts off [her] hands; / other times, he cuts out [her] tongue” (20, 21). Indeed the girl’s desire is protection from the prince, which the poem shows in her lament that sometimes “I never even get to the safety of you,” (18).

The poem “Becoming the Villainess” wraps up both the need to look attractive and the violence towards young women by exploring how both of these pressures turn young, innocent women into villainesses. The poem alludes to many fairy tale stories and myths, such as the princess who turned into a white cat and Ovid’s Philomena and mythologies all share a common theme. Young women endure endless perils for the ultimate goal – attaining a husband of high rank to care for and protect them. This goal provides them the best life that feudal Europe and ancient Greece can provide – a wealthy man that can protect them from the world. However, as illustrated by the story of Philomena, whose sister’s husband rapes her and tears out her tongue so that she cannot tell, not even this provides protection from men who see them as objects. To gain safety, she must forgo humanity and become a bird. The poem explores the warping that traumas such as these do to a young girl’s psyche; to protect herself, “her heart…become[s] a stone” (l 32). Gailey argues that the constant care and attention women place on placating men fails to work, drains their resources, and leads them to seek agency in morally bankrupt ways.

Instead of the comfort and warnings that fairy tales once gave audiences hundreds of years ago, Jeannine Hall Gailey’s modern retellings of these ancient fairy tales ring with uncomfortable truths,. The violence and cruelty of the originals remain; they are merely couched in modern perspectives of feminism and human rights. For me, a woman living in the twentieth century, the way Gailey tells these stories makes them lose none of their power – rather, the modern twist of the content makes them more appealing and personally relevant.

by Caroline Todd

If there were some sort of test to determine Southern-ness I would pass with flying colors. My qualifications are almost laughably appropriate: I learned how to drive my dad’s truck in elementary school – in Meriwether County pastures, no less. I enjoy visiting New York, but I could never picture myself living there. I eat an egg salad sandwich for lunch every day and I go by my middle name. And if all that weren’t enough, my grandmother lives in a one-stoplight town known for its twice-yearly “Cotton Pickin’ Fair.”

Joking aside, I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on Southern studies, especially not from an academic standpoint. There’s a world of scholarship out there that I haven’t even begun to crack the surface of, but my own experiences have taught me a lot about the way things work around here. My hometown is small enough that everybody knows just about everyone else, yet big enough to hold a fairly wide variety of classes and races. Growing up with that exposure has been a privilege; I’ve heard and responded to many different points of view my whole life, and I’ve come to find that there’s not just one kind of “South.” And as a voracious reader I adore literature that gets to the heart of Southern life, whatever that might mean.

The South is rich in stories and I was raised on them. I grew up hearing about my great-grandfather’s mill, my father’s summer job at a local peach stand, and the horse my aunt somehow managed to keep near downtown Atlanta. Some are nostalgic, others are funny, but most are a combination of the two. I have my own stories now, and even though I’m tempted to cry rosy retrospection at the days when my grandmother pulled my cousins and me around in a Radio Flyer wagon, that really is the way I spent my childhood. Recently, though, I’ve begun to understand some of the tragedy behind the stories told with less frequency, and though ignoring it can be tempting confronting it is the only way to make sense of it. That’s where literature comes in. There’s something to say for authors like Harper Lee who understand the nuances of where I come from and manage to turn that experience into words on a page. Lee, whose passing last Friday is an enormous blow to the American literary community, was my hero for a host of reasons, and I’ve learned from experience that Flannery O’Connor doesn’t exaggerate (remember the grandmother I’ve mentioned a couple of times? Rumor has it there’s a snakehandling church down the road from her house). These authors have a difficult job. Representing the South is a hard thing to do and it’s even harder to do well.

That’s because it’s not pretty. I might joke about my stereotypical experiences, but I’ve fought misogyny, racism, and small-mindedness, all hallmarks of Southern dysfunction, tooth and nail for as long as I remember. It’s an unpleasant legacy we bear for pretty obvious reasons. We have to acknowledge that we live in a region whose entire infrastructure depended on owning other people for far too long, and those scars remain very visible. Racial boundaries aside, too many people live below the poverty line and the cycle keeping them there is incredibly aggressive. But authors who aren’t from here like to either attack or romanticize the South, with nothing in between, and I’m convinced the only ones who approach the issue moderately are the locals. You have to be close to an experience to represent it well; “writing what you know” really is important. Some people just don’t get the South, and I’m of the opinion that they should quit trying while they’re ahead.

Over the summer, I read Marja Mills’ The Mockingbird Next Door, an incredible account of her friendship with Harper Lee and her sister Alice. Mills, a journalist from Chicago, was charged with interviewing Lee for an article in the Chicago Tribune and eventually became close friends with the Lee sisters. Quite tastefully, I thought, Mills withheld information about the Lees’ private lives while presenting an otherwise effective portrait of the two sisters. But writing about the South was a difficult process for Mills, which she learned the hard way. In writing one of her first articles for the Tribune, she made the mistake of writing the way Alice pronounced “Nelle Harper” – Harper Lee’s given name, by the way, is her mother Ellen’s name spelled backwards – as “Nail Hah-puh” and mentioning something about her soft drawl. Alice, of course, was incredibly offended by this diminutive representation, and I was a little more than miffed. It’s kitschy and belittling, and it feeds into the romanticized notion of slow-talking Southern do-gooders – what Flannery O’Connor calls “good country people.” Though Mills’ book is generally more respectful than this, she makes a point to call out other figures in the Lees’ social circle for what she deems irregular speech or behavior even after the Alice incident. Sure, peppering dialogue with a “somethin’” every now and then isn’t a problem, but calling people out for speaking in an accent traditionally associated with lack of intelligence is completely unnecessary. And I promise that two octogenarians drinking iced tea on their porch isn’t an occurrence atypical enough to merit a full-out anthropological investigation.

On the opposite end of the spectrum I hear many a belittling comment, often accompanied by an eyeroll, about the nature of Southern life. In an election year this comes out in full force. Yes, an embarrassing number of lower-class Southerners have come out in support of candidates like Donald Trump, but there’s got to be a reason why that no one feels compelled to investigate. One of Trump’s largest support bases happens to be high school dropouts. Is no one going to ask why so many Southerners choose not to pursue higher education, instead of mocking those who live a lifestyle that is incredibly hard to break out of?

As proud as I am to be Southern, I admit I live in a small-minded culture. It would be naïve to ignore the still pervasive racial tensions that mark Southern experiences across the board. Bigotry and ignorance, the worst kind of family heirlooms, get passed on from generation to generation and they’re incredibly hard to eradicate. Segregation was our grandparents’ reality and their parents saw days when women couldn’t vote. He’s ashamed to admit it, but my own father remembers a segregated waiting room in his doctor’s office years after the Civil Rights Act was passed.

The South isn’t all magnolia trees and Atticus Finch, but it’s not all fire and brimstone either. As Flannery O’Connor poignantly illustrates, the myth of “good country people” is just that. More often than not, people aren’t as “simple,” to put it the way O’Connor does, as they seem and if we’re too quick to judge or point and laugh we deny them their humanity. Life in the South is just as complicated as it is everywhere else, and only through understanding that can we move forward to achieve true progress.

by Meaghan Laetella

It’s no easy task to articulate what it means to be a writer. Maybe this isn’t something that you think about often. But for someone like me—a college student who is always turning in essays and short stories for my classes—the quest to be recognized as a “good writer” feels perpetual.

Last semester, I took a creative writing class called “Writing Outside of the Lines.” The goal of the course was to have us experiment with different forms of storytelling. Every assignment was a different variation on writing memoir. My very first assignment was to tell the story of “how I became a writer.”

The prompt bothered me for two reasons. For starters, I don’t have any recollection of when I first wrote something and actually enjoyed it. I racked my brains for some adorable childhood memory that could pass as a captivating narrative—but I came up blank. Writing my name for the first time? But that’s overdone.

Secondly, I have always felt guilty calling myself a “writer.”

It’s not that I don’t want people to think of me as a writer; I mean sure, writers often get branded as egomaniacs with tortured souls, people who think they know something about everything. But my reluctance to be branded by this stereotype isn’t why I refrain from self-identifying as a writer. My aversion stems from something much deeper. In truth, I feel as though I do not deserve the title.

So who is a writer? The short answer would be anyone who has ever written. But let’s break it down. Ernest Hemingway believes that a true writer is devoted to the craft. If he is writing, it may take him all morning to finish just one paragraph. If he’s not writing, then he is clearing his mind so that he can be sharp in the morning.

“…I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day,” Hemingway said. “That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything.” I think Hemingway would agree that a writer is like an athlete in training. He puts in the work when he needs to, and he pushes himself to perform at his highest level in order to achieve the best result possible. But when it’s time to rest, he takes care to let his body and mind recover.

A professor once told me that when other people begin to refer to you as a writer—people other than your friends and family—you have officially earned the distinction. It’s safe to say that a “professional” writer is one whose words people would continually pay to read.

Harper Lee, the widely beloved author of To Kill a Mockingbird, once said: “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”

In other words, a writer must be able to take criticism. More importantly, a writer cannot let the fear of failure prevent him from writing. Perseverance is essential if a writer ever wants to be successful. John Steinbeck, the brains behind The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, advises writers to “abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day…then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.”

All writers will be rejected at some point in their career. The ones who make it are the ones who don’t take no for an answer. But what about writers’ block? What if you have the perseverance, you know that you want to finish what you have started, but you simply don’t know where the story is going? My favorite piece of advice to tackle this problem comes from James Baldwin, whose non-fiction work Notes of a Native Son exudes passion and authenticity: “…When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway…”

The insight that each of these authors possesses has helped me form my own definition of what it means to be a “writer.” In my opinion, a real writer is someone whose name stands the test of time; whose words are repeated for years after he or she has passed away; whose stories can be read and reread thousands of times without readers ever growing tired of them; people Like Hemingway, Lee, Steinbeck and Baldwin.

The truth is, I’m not trying to write the next great American novel. I don’t seek to be a bestselling author by the time I’m thirty, or to have famous directors calling me to claim the movie rights to my stories. I often wonder if my self-deprecating attitude towards writing stems from the fact that I don’t have any concrete writing goals. For me, writing is just something I have always seemed to be at least decent at, but not necessarily something that defines me. It’s an activity that allows me to be alone with my thoughts; it’s a cheap and accessible form of therapy.

So…what’s my point, you ask? Writing takes on many forms. It all depends on who the writer is and what their end-goals are. If you’re ambitious and talented enough, you can make a career out of the craft. But some writers are just destined to be mediocre. And that’s ok! If you like to write, you shouldn’t stop practicing just because no one besides your mother and your seven cats may ever hear your stories. And if you’re someone who has never tried writing anything for fun, I challenge you to take a stab at it. You may hate it; but you’ll never know for sure until you sit down and give it a go.

What do you think about this question? What “legitimizes” a writer? How would you begin to define what it means to be a writer? Do you consider yourself a writer? If so, what kind of writer are you?

by Hendley Badcock

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from my mother. Her voice, strange and strained, carried grave news—our friend had passed away. The charismatic, disarming 25-year-old I had known for most of my life was suddenly gone, taken from his family and his friends.

On the topic of death and dying young, I gravitate toward Keats, another man who died at the premature age of 25, a year after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Anticipating death, Keats’ ticking mortal clock haunted him and infected his poetry. His illness stoked a morbid obsession about which he composed beautiful, profound, distressed, regretful, and frustrated lines. Through his art, Keats produced some of the most revered meditations on leaving the material world before he might have been ready.

When I read “To Sleep,” for instance, my own fears about death’s power to take life are somewhat calmed. In the sonnet, Keats both praises a tender, romantic portrayal of eternal sleep and confesses his psychological unrest about his own mortality. In a form traditionally associated with love, Keats’ sonnet dedicated to death plays off an idea of adoration and suggests that perhaps, at the moment of composition, Keats was more comfortable with confronting his own passing:

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,                        1

Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close                5

In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes

Or wait the “Amen,” ere thy poppy throws

Around my bed its lulling charities.

“O soft embalmer” (1), Keats addresses death. “O soothest sleep!” (5), he says. The poets’ calls symbolize his viewing death as a friend or at least an approachable force near enough to which he can speak intimately. In the octave Keats commends sleep’s powers and asks to be overtaken by them; however, in the sestet he reveals the mental tormentors that inspire his request to die:

Then save me, or the passed day will shine

Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,—                10

Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,

And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.                 14

While explicitly embracing death, the speaker simultaneously awaits his final slumber with anxiety. Each time he lies down “upon [his] pillow, breeding many woes” (10), his mind races with fear, with wonder, with sadness. Nevertheless, this is a moment for Keats to be “save[d]” (9) from earthly worries for the sake of “forgetfulness divine” (4). Not only can sleep expel man’s physical, material issues, it also constitutes a divine state which graces all beings upon death.

Although Keats was not granted a long life, he was given time to reflect, contemplate, and compose. How gratifying (or agitating) was this opportunity for him? Clearly, Keats had conflicting emotions about his impending death. Who wouldn’t? But surely writing such poems helped him process what was happening to him physically, mentally, and emotionally. In “Sonnet to Sleep,” Keats’ implies that he has grown tired of resenting, fearing, and maybe even cursing death and now has grown to accept its inevitability. There’s a great deal of hopelessness in the poem but also real understanding of what is out of his control. The poet works through all of these feelings in just fourteen lines. Keats’ poetry had to have empowered him through his darkest times. After all, if the act of writing about his death was not therapeutic for him in some way, then why did he compose so many poems like this? What was the point?

I want to press further and ask what’s the point of reading these poems. When Keats’ friends and family read them, did they help them cope and mourn? Did they feel like they could understand Keats’ emotional and mental processing of his death through his lyric chronicles? I feel like they must have. So then, if my friend had had the chance to scribble down a few lines, pen a letter, or, heck, write an entire book, what might he write in it? Would it provoke us to think about the memories of our loved ones, the value of our own lives?

Audiences, I believe, do get a therapeutic affect from literature on death. Why would it have sustained as a subgenre otherwise? Kevin Henkes’ Olive’s Ocean I read for fun when I was hardly twelve. Mitch Albom’s Tuesday with Morrie was required reading when I was in high school. And I just started reading Paul Hardy’s Tinkers earlier this year. These books all contemplate death and dying and appeal to a range of ages. All of them drew me to meditate on the impressions people make on one other throughout their lifetimes and even after their deaths. “Sonnet to Sleep” is no different. Any reader can relate to Keats’ feelings and fears about her own mortality just by reading it.

I do not think it’s a vain attempt to try to hear my friend’s words—or you any late friends’ words—in the poetry of someone who, like Keats, had the opportunity to write down some thoughts about his own death. I believe that Keats can speak in retrospect for those of whom death sneaks up on and takes quietly, suddenly, and unexpectedly. I truly hope to find consolation for myself and others who grieve unexpected deaths in his words. Whether Keats’ warning was, to him or his friends, a blessing or a curse, he nonetheless has given us tools with which we can try to process death’s untimely taking of a truly loved and missed young man, my friend. As Keats puts it, death took my friend and “[shut], with careful fingers and benign, [his] gloom-pleas’d eyes,” but this divine sleep has undoubtedly transferred him to someplace better than he knew here.