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Littles' Mills and the Letters
The Reaping The Little Brothers Stock Their Farms Exchange of Goods I Could Not Stay in Newark The Lord in the Mists Aprons Are Very Fashionable The Wedding Gift Cry Holy It Must Have Been the Muscadines Three Women by the Pee Dee River Miss Fanny is Needed Back Home Free as a Bird One Hundred Hams and Sam's Two Sons Shrapnel Columns Epilogue: February 12, 1983 |
While listening to Oxford American’s first podcast of Points South, I was mortified by this description of Thomas Hart Benton’s painting, The Sources of Country Music: “You also have a black man sitting on a log playing a five string banjo by himself. You have either enslaved people or recently freed people painted pretty much in the background.” Wow. That is exactly how I had painted Bill in the poem it “It Must Have Been the Muscadines”: Bill had a banjo that he played alone/but when Texanna played piano/Bill would hide outside her window….
This dominant culture mindset in my writing appalled me, but the whole process of addressing racism is a process of increasing awareness. Awareness of course, is never enough. When we are surprised and dismayed by our biases, it’s time to make changes. And we should expect to continue this process of recognition and response ad infinitum. The poem is published. I cannot go back and change the published copies, but I am posting this revised version of the poem. It Must Have Been the Muscadines While Texanna played her scales, Bill, enslaved, ate muscadines. Texanna learned to play etudes. Soon waltzes and sonatas followed. Bill had a banjo that his father made, but when Texanna played piano Bill, outside her window swallowed muscadines like quarter notes. Late nights Texanna listened to the banjo in the distance. Night songs and sonatas in her dreams were blended to become same. What afflicted Texanna afflicted Bill though Adeline blamed muscadines for the slave's demise. Absalom and Adeline buried their daughter in view of the house and built a fence to hold her there. |