#BALLAD OF JANE FULL#

For my ear, Springer is more an inhabitant. Jordan gestures at the South, as though to say, Lo, South, you have reaped the death of my Mother, as you have reaped your own land. But I would say thereвЂ™s a difference between the two books. ThatвЂ™s the texture of the South in SpringerвЂ™s book. Like if you were using semiotics to analyze a Wes Anderson film, but the critic keeps filling his notebook with dried moths taped to each page as a method of signifying the unsignifiable Anderson has in each of his movies. For me, SpringerвЂ™s book is one step higher. Filled with a similar population and landscape. Carolina Ghost Wood by Judy Jordan stands as one of my favorites. I have seen deepвЂђthroated Southern poetry like this before.

#BALLAD OF JANE FULL#

Also the man who would carry a full wash tub of water to the second floor to save his infant son from fire. Also the man who would wait for a caged squirrel to bite his hand so he could break its back. I give you the poem вЂњEther,вЂќ вЂњa flammable mix of ethyl alcohol & sulfuric acid.вЂќ Also the name of the speakerвЂ™s grandfather. The landscape, the family, the incidental characters that enter both books have this fantastically grounded reality where you doubt and believe their existences at the same time. And whether this is a Southern thing or not, IвЂ™m not concerned. And letвЂ™s just say mythology is personal. Have you read SpringerвЂ™s first book, Dear Blackbird? I have. Who else would this speaker be writing her вЂњLetter to the DarkвЂќ to? On every вЂњtendril of incense allemanding through the first ambrosial jasmineвЂќ on every вЂњhair of space parting to make way for the barge,вЂќ Springer has lodged a letter onto the fine grain of existence so she can articulate her love to its most minute substance. Et tu, Existence? the Southern writer proclaims. That dark, immovable, unmistakably swollen river that is love loving you thicker and thicker. Because, from what I can see thatвЂ™s what they call love down there. Why is it the speaker who needs to apologize? You must not be from the South. It is every broken relationship her family ever fit into the DNA of these poems. This horrible, ironic apology the speaker is writing to these Southern roots that ruined her adolescence. And in the real South, where donвЂ™t you see the color green?ДЇor me, Murder Ballad feels like an apology. Death, or tragedy, or horrible crime feels like the color green. Why make anything of it? ItвЂ™s part of what people there live through.

Tragedy in the South is endemic and innate to what the Southerner believes in herself. What is truth in the South? Why does it feel like the most proper and honest way to look at trauma is to let it lie with everything else the South produces, arranged so the trauma thinks itвЂ™s getting a pass on real trauma, not because real trauma doesnвЂ™t exist, but because real trauma is so common in Tennessee and Louisiana. ItвЂ™s in the despicable laughter of six men, one of whom had a rodeo belt buckle. ItвЂ™s in every piece of inventory at the Dixie Dandy Grocery.

ItвЂ™s in the mind of a stone marker commemorating a slave who died on plantation. ItвЂ™s in the unexceptional negligence a 16вЂђyearвЂђold girl has for what she can make of her future. But for Springer, the crime is a horrible rape, and itвЂ™s in full view, at all times, from all angles. Inevitability implies the event will be coming into view at any moment. Read вЂњHindsightвЂ™s BalladвЂ¦вЂќ Where to say the crime were вЂњinevitableвЂќ would be cheating the poem of its full scope of bewilderment. Need I remind you that the sublime can be found in the terrible? And that there is a tradition accounting for how unreasonable the sublime is? Murder Ballad is a crime so deeply wrought in the bookвЂ™s flesh that I would prefer, as a reader, to make that flesh a river. Or, put more appropriately, Jane Springer is inside the South David Bottoms is holding at armвЂ™s length.

Jane Springer is not your David BottomsвЂ™ South. But not that ironically distanced South that comes up in a certain brand of Southern Literature. ItвЂ™s the way I imagine the South treats a river it loves and curses and adores and curses and pulls into itself when the night has discovered the right part of quiet for sleeping. Imagine a perfectly cut square held on the riverвЂ™s surface, and imagine the water marking it and hollowing it out and running through it all at once. Because the poems are going to vacate and fill in the space that was left in the Mississippi at once. Because a book of poetry can do anything, I am going to propose that Jane SpringerвЂ™s Murder Ballad open a hole in the Mississippi River.

Ballad of jane