South Carolina Books

As is my habit with art books, I leafed through to view the images before reading the text. The bucolic scenes transported me back to a genteel time, when American was young and rich and full of promise.

Which is precisely the dilemma of plantation art. Typically hung in the landscape section of galleries, it reinforces the seductive myth of the Antebellum South as paradise lost. But in reality plantations were slave labor camps, and mostly absent from the paintings are the slaves upon whose labor the plantation rested and who, when depicted at all, are merely quaint accents or contented pets of benevolent masters.

LANDSCAPE OF SLAVERY serves as a companion to a traveling exhibit of the same name organized by the Gibbes Museum of Art and the Carolina Art Association. It explores the complex and incompatible experiences of plantation life represented in works by diverse artists, from picturesque painters such as Thomas Coram through Winslow Homer (who, as Michael D. Harris writes, appears to have been "more sensitive to different notions evoked by the word `plantation'") to Hale Woodruff whose work is full of rage.

All of the essays provide thought-provoking commentary on this complex dynamic. "Picturing the Plantation" provides an overview of the landscape tradition and its idealizing vocabulary, while "Identifying Spaces of Blackness" explores the African aesthetic found in rituals, ceremonies, dance, music and art created by slaves as a means of resistance and survival. "The Most Famous Plantation of All" about the politics and painting of Mount Vernon sent me to the internet where the web site of the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens offers this rationale for why the Father of Our Country owned human beings:

"George Washington was born into a world in which slavery was accepted."

Of course, the "acceptance" of slavery depended upon one's vantage point. Ditto "nostalgia." I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in American art in general, and Southern history and culture in particular. It will definitely enrich your next visit to the landscape gallery.

I purchased this book several years ago and I was very impressed with the information that is in this book. Everything from planting instructions, soil requirements, and so on! It is also very detailed with "actual" color photos of the plants. It is a handy guide for those landscape architects and landscape contractors out there and it is very useful for the home gardener.

This anthology could have included a lot more than fifteen poets: North Carolina is for some reason full of remarkable writers, many poets among them. But by limiting the number of authors represented, Michael McFee is able to offer us a significant profile of each. Would that more anthologists took this approach! And this is a pretty varied crowd. There's A.R. Ammons, two-time winner of the National Book Award, and Maya Angelou, known to practically everyone after her appearance at the 1992 Presidential Inauguration--and then there's little-known Jonathan Williams, whose whimsical, often outrageous poems have usually been published by small presses. There's Robert Morgan, who writes of Appalachian life, and James Applewhite, who writes about the tobacco country down east. Some of these writers, such as Angelou, James Seay, and Betty Adcock, grew up in other parts of the South, and virtually all of them have traveled widely; despite its subtitle, this collection is anything but provincial. It's a must-have for those interested in North Carolina writing, but anyone who appreciates good poetry will enjoy this book.

Let Us Meet In Heaven is a compendium of letters written by James Michael Barr of the 5th South Carolina Cavalry, during the American Civil War. Editorial notes explaining place names and the like help make the letters instantly and immediately understandable to any reader; extensive familiarity with the battles of the Civil War is not needed to read and understand Barr's testimony. Let Us Meet in Heaven also includes an index makes for quick and easy reference. Let Us Meet In Heaven is a compelling, informative primary source and an invaluable contribution to Civil War studies reading lists and historical reference collections.

This book contrary to the note attached to the title notation that it is "womens" diarys and letters. It deals with one indiviual Andrew Sheffield daughter of (yes daughter) James L Sheffield Confererate Colonel,Senator and politican from Marshall County Alabama. Andrew was committed to Bryce Hospital the State Asylum at Tuscaloosa by her father and stepbrother who was the probate judge in Marshall Co at the time. It is doubtful that she was insane, however she had disgraced the family by having an affair and committing an attemped act of arson at the request of her lover Dr William May. James Sheffield shot Dr May for dishonoring his family, he was arrested but no billed. When it became apparent that Andrew was to be tried for attemped arson. She was commited to Bryce. This book is almost entirely composed of letters written by Andrew from the time of her commitment until her death in 1920. She wrote to her father and brother as long as her father lived begging to be released and allowed to stand trial for her "criminal act". She over the years wrote long intelligent and lucid letters to all the Govenors who served during her confinment. Several considered releasing her,however her family was well connected enough to keep her there. It is very painful and depressing reading these letters, however it very clearly reflects the total lack of control women had over their lives in this period. It is interesting to note that her father this pillar of the community had a second family only a few miles away by his long time mistress. A very interesting example of the double standards of the period.

This is a marvelous study not only of a poignant African-Brazilian woman persecuted for daring to state her beliefs, but one that reveals the different ways that American (Levine) and Brazilian (Meihy) scholars perceive the problems of race in society. A must read for anyone interested in Latin American society or the history of women or of blacks in the hemisphere.

This book by Robert Boak Slocum is a fine introduction to Austin Farrer, who is considered by many to have been the greatest Anglican theologian in the 20th century. Consisting of seven short chapters, each of which deals with a specific theme, Slocum's work is something like a theological encomium to Farrer. He clearly has a grasp on the material, delineating it in a systematic fashion, but also including a number of Farrer's own statements. The reader is given the sense that rather than being introduced by Farrer to Slocum (which is how these types of books can sometimes come across), the reader is introduced by Slocum to Farrer himself - which is exactly how it should be.

After a preface entitled "The Challenge and Promise of Farrer", in which Slocum encourages us to heed Farrer's statement that we need to go "beyond our powers and out of our depth" (xiii), the first chapter briefly looks at Farrer's personal background, the method of his theological work and his major theological perspectives. This chapter is well joined to the second chapter, which looks briefly at some of the major systematic trends in Farrer's thought. The third - seventh chapters ultimately get into the real meat of Farrer's theology; each chapter has a specific focus: the eschaton, theodicy, Farrer's notion of "transforming images", poetic and literary inspiration, and finally the relationship of God's action with free will.

The fifth and sixth chapters are worth the price of admission alone. In the fifth chapter is a discussion of Farrer's ideas about images - both verbal and artistic - as being central to human imagination and understanding. He grounds his view with the theological claim that "the rejection of idolatry meant not the destruction but the liberation of images" (52). One is given the sense that this facet of Farrer's thought is rich for the development of theological aesthetics - including but not limited to something such as iconography. Images, in Farrer's theology, are given through revelatory events, and seen through "inspired vision" (55) of the sort that the Apostles had.

In the sixth chapter, one is brought face-to-face with the fact that Farrer was well ahead of his time with his ideas about literary interpretations of the Bible. Farrer held that inspiration was the "midway point between poetry and metaphysics" (64) and that, because the Bible was an inspired text, rather than being read as a work of theology, a work such as The Gospel According to St. Mark should be read as "a play of images and allusions of the subtle and elusive kind which belongs to the imagination rather than to rational construction" (70). Slocum notes some of the criticisms made of Farrer in his day on precisely this point, as well as the way that he has been picked up and defended by literary critic Frank Kermode (in The Genesis of Secrecy). One is inclined to think that the Bible might be - at least in Farrer's hands - something like a truly divine text to be read critically and immanently, imaginatively and deeply.

Slocum is wonderfully transparent throughout the majority of this book, and is seen only at those times when connections are drawn between Farrer's work and other Anglican theologians. I confess, however, that although I appreciate his desire to draw links between Farrer and those that preceded him - such as American theologian William Porcher Dubose - and those that came after him - such as John MacQuarrie - his inclusion of the thematic similarities within the narrative sometimes subtracted from the narrative itself. It's interesting, for example, that Dubose and Farrer thought similarly about a number of things, but am I supposed to think that Dubose influenced Farrer? At no point does Slocum claim so; is the claim, then, implicit? I think that Slocum's desire here is to show that there are continuities of thought within the Anglican tradition, but rather than scattering these comparisons throughout the text, it would have been preferable to have read about these thematic connections in a concluding chapter - especially as the book itself does not have a conclusion, which is a bit of a disappointment.

For those seeking a clear introduction to Farrer's theology, as well as to some of the ways in which it connects with the theology of some other Anglican thinkers, Light in a Burning Glass is a fine place to begin. Along with the recent reader put out by Canterbury Press, The Truth Seeking Heart, inquiring and interested minds will have fine glimpse through the Burning-Glass to divine light.

Edited with an introduction and commentary by Charles R. Mack and Ilona S. Mack, Like A Sponge Thrown Into Water: Francis Lieber's European Travel Journal Of 1844-1845 is a remarkable and personal look into European culture in the mid-nineteenth century, as written in the diary of the intellectual Francis Lieber (1798-1872). A highly recommended addition to European History academic reference collections and supplemental reading lists, this remarkable eyewitness account reflects the distinguished and cultured tastes of its notable author.

This is an amazing book by a writer who deserves much wider recognition! Bonner, unfortunately, continues to be neglected by literary critics and scholars. But this novel, published in 1878, while certainly of interest to the literary historican, will also appeal to lay readers interested in the South, American womanhood, and the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. What makes this novel of superior worth, however, is not only its historical value but also the high quality of the writing. Let me assure you, this is one very well-written book. Bonner combines a coming-of-age narrative with an early realism and generally avoids the sentimentalism of most popular fiction of the nineteenth century. Therefore, readers today will find it very accessible and a pleasant surprise! I taught this book in a college course and my students unanimously enjoyed it and wondered why they had never heard of Sherwood Bonner before.

Like Unto Like challenges many of our stereotpyes about Southern women as passive, dainty belles. Blythe, the heroine, is a very thoughtful, independent-minded young woman, so much so that she is eager to welcome the Northern soldiers stationed in her Southern small town (Yariba) after the Civil War. Much to the chagrin of all around her, she initiates a reconciliation between North and South, only to discover how complex a relationship she has to her family and region. In her love affair with a Northern officer, she confronts her feelings about love, politics, race, the legacy of the war, and, ultimately, her own independence.

The main interest of the book derives from its insider's view of what it felt like to live in the conquered South after the war. But its real charm derives from its heroine, who reminds me very much of Jo in Little Women. Bonner writes of her, using her characteristically ironic tone: "Perhaps if Blythe had been more popular among the young people she would have absorbed herself more happily in the usual interests of a girl in her father's home; but she had never been a favorite. She was called literary. This was an unfortunate adjective in Yariba, and set one rather apart from one's fellows, like an affliction in the family." This, of course, is what endears her to the narrator, and to us. Blythe is different and embraces her difference. But as she grows up and learns to reconcile herself with her community, she struggles to understand her place in a nation that was so recently torn apart and is trying to heal. That this book offers no easy solutions to the dilemmas of its heroine and a nation emerging from Reconstruction is a testament to its excellence.

To keep going as a writer over the years, at least in the minor and non-commercial genre of American poetry, you have to tell yourself some version of Mark Twain's trans-Atlantic cable: "The reports of my death [as a poet] have been greatly exaggerated." Robin Magowan is an American surrealist poet of genuine imagination and linguistic risks who has kept writing over the years with a consistency of tactic and concern that might be called obsessional, wish-drenched fantasy from one point of view and the signature of an authentic style from another.

A special listening is at the core of this poetics of the syllable and the transcendental image. For "God still moves in the sound of the long `o,' as Dylan Thomas once suggested; and although a half-century of deconstructive semiotics (and worse) have taught us to be much more cautious about such enthusiasms for the logos and the mystique of verbal and religious presence, such assumptions and risks of intuitive language and the inscape of imagery are at the core of Robin Magowan's poetry.

Magowan's Lilac Cigarette in a Wish Cathedral, as its wonderful title for this project suggests, registers a poetry of risk-fulfillment, tracking extremities and delicacies of sense and wish, mountain journeys, desert flights, movements into and out of the primacy of ecstatic fulfillment that haunts the Greco-Roman tradition as this comes down to the United States via a "whit manic" incarnation that haunts our little streets and huge continental hungers. He works this through the Emersonian sense of abandonment and solitary quest, which seeks "ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the fact" of self-loss and the desacralization that is the fate of commodity culture.

This is a singular collection, suggesting a life-long discipline in the poetic image and the path of heightened language, a highly wrought and prolonged "derangement of the senses" a la Rimbaud that has taken Magowan from Greece to Tibet and back it its quest.

The last poem in Lilac Cigarette in a Wish Cathedral (wherein, as Richard Howard aptly puts it in his trenchant introduction, "the hierophant smokes his lilac cigarette in a wish cathedral" that is each poem) is entitled "O," and moves from the crooning and screeching plea of a Whitmanic voice, "O my rooster's urge/ to spring voice loud" to the cranked-up ecstasy (bleeding sound into picture) of "dawn flushed/ crimson screaming o."

Pain and pleasure as elsewhere bleed into the mix, the poet lost into the rooster's urge to give rebirth to the whole mounting and morning landscape. In "Miniature," this transmutation of local scene into the mystique of poetic/ religious presence is effected not so much through the visual as through impactions of the aural, what Hopkins called the "inscape" of leaping vowels: "The pleasure of sounds innocently grasped/ A peacock in the eyes of the rain." This twisted and torqued little haiku of a poem depends on the "e" becoming "I" becoming "a" as much as upon the image transformation. The poem enacts, in "miniature," the mix of hearing and sounding that becomes the aesthetic medium of the "wish cathedral."

In a time still dominated by the locality of image (as in Williams) and the play of skeptical wit (Stevens, and his heirs like Ashbery), Magowan had always pursued something else, something closer to Breton or Michaux and the sources of magical incarnations in European surrealism as a kind of interior Orphic line. Magowan's book thus opens in Greece, and seeks the ecstasy of dance and music as tactic of self-loss. Later, "Orfeo" courts this lineage, where the poet (ancient to modern) descends to mount, "goes in a gorge/ Of pluming, spraying song." No gods or muse arises to help the sense of abandonment and self-loss amid the murmuring of deadly presence, "just a wingbeat to guide/ Murmurous wasp center, alone."