"There's A Poem in This Place": National Poetry Month 2022

 Upon March's departure, the BDC display case was prepared for National Poetry Month. The BDC has fairly extensive holdings of some of our local poets from the 19th through 21st centuries. To be eligible for the "Forever Collection," the poet must have direct ties to the former Beaufort District area as well as write poetry which reflects their personal understanding of our culture, history, and environment. Among the poets, living and dead, represented in the Research Room (but not necessarily in this display case) are: Robert Woodward Barnwell, Patricia Bee, Walter Dennis, Edith Bannister Dowling, Arthur G. Foster, Robert Elliott Gonzales, William J. Grayson, and Gilbert Augustus Selby. 

I tried to select books with blue or beige covers that also contained poems about specific locations in Beaufort District to reflect the color scheme and intent of National Poetry Month's 2022 theme "There's a Poem in This Place." I was somewhat  successful in that Beaufort Town, Beautiful Isle of Fripp on the bottom shelf and Mulberry Wine on the second shelf had more than one poem directly tied to a specific location for which the BDC has supplementary materials to share with customers to enhance this post and/or Facebook posts during the month. 

Pinned to the back of the case is a definition of "poetry" which you can enlarge and read in the illustration. 

I used a print-out of the 2022 poster glue-sticked to a blue sheet of construction paper pinned to the wall of the display case between the first and second shelves to serve as the title of the exhibit. It's not particularly pretty but it does what I need it to do. 

Pinned to the wall above the third shelf is a transcription of one of my favorite verses found in the Research Room, "Island Names," by Edith Bannister Dowling from One for Sorrow, Two for Joy (Hilton Head Island Publishing Co., 1967). She manages to cover a lot of names associated with Hilton Head Island within 25 short lines, to wit., 

Island Names by Edith Bannister Dowling

Fish Haul, And Bay Gall: Names in use down there -- Place-names, worn, Like Honey Horn, Through times both fierce and fair; Houses, and Plantations, stand In ruins, or all waste. Spanish Wells -- The names ring bells Of memories; interlaced With Skull Creek, Broad Creek, And Muddy Creek, abode... Each place known, a name; And Myrtle Bank, And Bram's Point ... Some etymologist Can add them, dissect them: I just know they exist In Hilton Head's long story: My last name I'll be tossing In this good island's glory: The James F. Byrnes, his Crossing.

Shelf 1: I chose William John Grayson's Hireling and the Slave for several reasons. Grayson is probably the most important of Beaufort District's many poets and this is a rare volume. He had a varied career as an educator, lawyer, poet and government official. In this apology of slavery, Grayson describes the plight of the Northern factory worker as worse than that of the Southern slave. You can learn more about Grayson's life and works in the BDC's WordPress blog. 

I selected Father and Son because of its blue cover and the beautiful artwork of Jonathan Green. Every few lines Green added another painting. The verse by Denize Lauture that Green illustrated is: 

Father and son

          Hand in hand

          Up on the road

          In the sun ... 

in which they go to the beach, pick apples, sit on a porch swing reading books, go fishing, etc. - among all those activities that cement positive family relationships. Our copy is autographed by the illustrator. 

Shelf 2 features Evening Light, Mulberry Wine, Brother and Sister ... Heart to Heart and Dusky Land. 

The very first South Carolina Poetry Archives Book Prize was won by a Beaufort resident and poet, Warren Slesinger. His book, The Evening Light, was highly praised by Gilbert Allen, poet and publisher of the Ninety-Six Press: 

The Evening Light is more than the sum of its individual parts.  Its three movements ... seem graceful and intricately harmonious.  Slesinger doesn't write the same poem over and over again to create the mere illusion of 'voice.' Instead, he weaves together personal meditations, images of Beaufort, South Carolina, and the warning implicit in such words as 'Lifeboat' and 'Scrapescape' to provide readers with a tapestry of moral insight and artistic achievement." (p. ix)

Harbor

Beaufort, South Carolina

by Warren Slesinger

Yesterday, the diesel engine of a shrimp boat

throbbed in the harbor, windows rattled in a shack

and gulls squabbled over garbage on the shore.

Image: Lucille Hasell Culp Collection, Beaufort District Collection. All rights reserved. 

Mulberry Wine by Amy Jenkins Bassett and illustrated by Alex Foltz (2010) is a collection of 25 poems about a childhood spent in Beaufort, SC. Each poem chronicles some aspect of the author's personal experiences, but also paints a picture for the reader about growing up in a small town in the South. The poems address school, church, nature, customs, ambience, relationships and the changing landscape. She even wrote an ode to the Drive-In movie theater: 

Drive-In by Amy Jenkins Bassett

          The Hilton Inn wasn't always there

           Instead sprawled the Greenlawn Theater

           The spacious drive-in milieu where

            We went to clock our movie meter. ...

            Sagas played out on a Technicolor screen

            Dramas, westerns, and romances galore

            Were eyed intermittently between

            Kisses stolen pressed against the car's door. ... 

            How utterly fortunately groovy

            To have not one choice but three

            Of an old-time drive-in movie

            Where one could choose to be....   

I selected Brother and Sister' ... Heart to Heart (1994) by artivist and Queen of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, Marquetta Goodwine and her brother Ronald Goodwine and Dusky Land: Gullah Poems and Sketches of Coastal South Carolina by Erroll Hay Colcock and Patti Lee Hay Colcock. (1942),  coincidentally another brother and sister team, mostly on account of the artwork. Dusky Land contains wonderful silhouettes cut by Carew Rice. Over time our first edition copy, described on rare book websites as "Pink buckram with black inked drawing on front board; no text on spine" has become a tannish- dark beige. The Goodwine siblings used a silhouette like image on the cover too. They also co-authored a novella T'inkin' 'bout Famlee.

The third shelf contains River of Words (2017) , a student publication sponsored by the Beaufort County School District and the Port Royal Sound Foundation and an anthology of poems by former Palmetto Post newspaper editor.  

Elphna Hernandez, Grade 5 of the Hilton Head School for the Creative Arts wrote the following poem for River of Words (2017): 

The Watershed

          Brackish water here and there

          Spartina grass everywhere

          The grass dancing joyfully

          When the water starts to sing

          Animals peeking

          Out of the water looking for food   

          And hearing all the chatter

          I am sad

          Because I have to go to bed

          But I know

          I can come back to the watershed

Preparing this display and reviewing the content contained therein, I am certain to use some of the River of Words volumes student artwork and poems during the Summer Reading Program 2022 which has the theme "Oceans of Possibilities". (So far the BDC has copies of the issues for 2013, 2015 - 2018).

Since I took the original image of the full display case, I have added a photograph of the Palmetto Poet's author, Samuel Henry Rodgers. 

Rodgers (1845 - 1919) spent his early years in Charleston. He served in the 23rd South Carolina Regiment in Charleston, at the Battle of Gettysburg, and returned to South Carolina to participate in the defense of Charleston. He was awarded the Confederate Gold Medal by the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. His journalism career began with the Charleston News and Courier. In 1878 he moved his young family to Beaufort in order to found a newspaper called the Beaufort Crescent. Three years later he moved to Port Royal to found the Palmetto Post. (We have copies of the Palmetto Post on microfilm 1882 - 1906.) He moved back to Beaufort in 1904. Two years later the Palmetto Post was consolidated with the Beaufort Gazette as Rodgers was a part owner of the Beaufort Gazette Publishing Company. Rodgers remained a Beaufort resident until his death on 12 December 1919. His body is interred in the St. Helena's Episcopal Churchyard. His poem, very timely given that the highest Christian festival is upon us, "At Easter Dawn" was composed on 20 April 1905.

At Easter Dawn

Sweetly the birds are singing

              At Easter dawn;

Sweetly the bells are ringing;

              On Easter morn.

And the words that they say,

               On this Easter day,

Are, "Christ the Lord is risen."

Birds! forget not your singing

            At Easter dawn;

Bells! be ye ever ringing

            On Easter morn.

In the spring of the year,

            When Easter is here,

Sing, "Christ the Lord has risen."

Buds! ye will soon be flowers

            Cheery and white;

Snowstorms are changing to showers,

            Darkness to light.

With the awakening of spring,

            Oh, sweetly sing,

"Lo! Christ the Lord has risen."

Easter buds were growing

            Ages ago!

Easter lilies were blowing

            By the water's flow.

All nature was glad,

            Not a creature was sad,

For Christ the Lord had risen.

The bottom shelf contains three small volumes of verse. Beaufort Town, Beautiful Isle of Fripp by Septima Palm, The Struggle for Peace of a Gullah Mind by Alvin J. Green, and In the Wind by Art Cornell. 

Palm had a long life. According to an online obituary from the Greenville News published on August 19, 2001 that is hosted on the Legacy website, "Septima Glover Twyford Palm (Mrs. John McConnell Palm, Jr.) of Brookline Manor, Mifflintown, Pa. and formerly of Greenville ... was a published poet, writing many books of poetry based on her love of family and nature." We are the only SCLENDS Library to hold Beaufort Town, Beautiful Isle of Fripp. Expect to read some of her poems during National Postcard Week, May 1 - 7, 2022 on the BDC's Facebook page. I'm going to illustrate some of her poems with postcards from the BDC's collections to celebrate. 

Though born and reared in the South Carolina lowcountry, Alvin J. Green has spent most of his adult life in New England. He offers some seasonal advice in his first poetry book, The Struggle for Peace:

Lift heavy burdens and take charge of your life.                            Work with persistence, humility and joy.                                      Penance will reward you handsomely,                                              Learn from the sins of your fathers and mothers.                          Look up and sing anyway.

The 50th Anniversary website of the Art League of Hilton Head says this about Art Cornell, poet and photographer for In the Wind (2003) who retired to that island: 

ART CORNELL is an acclaimed photographer, poet, and painter of abstract art.  His works reside in private and corporate collections throughout the United States.  He has judged numerous art and photography shows throughout the Lowcountry. In addition, he has written five poetry books and contributed his poetry to numerous regional publications. He is also recognized as a national Concours automotive judge. Currently, Art exhibits at Art League of Hilton Head. Art assists with the Arts program at Memory Matters, an organization dedicated to assisting individuals suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Recently he received certification in art therapy from Cognitive Connections. Art is also an instructor at Art League Academy, where he offers a number of classes, workshops, and private one-on-one or group lessons. 

Cornell actively posts a poem a month on his website.     

Reminder: The Library will be closed on April 15 for Good Friday ... 

... and again on Wednesday, April 20, 2022: