Tag: memory
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Going West With Wiman
A few more words for Christian Wiman. As if my words for Joy, (an edited collection of poems), and He Held Radical Light, (a memoir), and Survival is a Style, (a personal collection of poems), have not been enough to convince you that he’s a writer worth savoring. Seeking more I went back to his…
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Via Dolorosa of the Confederacy
My piece on visiting Appomattox Court House is up on the blog of StreetLight Magazine. Click here.
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The Long Shadow of The Yellow House
It’s hard to say, even 370 pages later, what the yellow house means to Sarah Broom. As a substantial structure about which to tell a story of a place, it’s not much to look at—a shotgun house in New Orleans East, ultimately ravaged by Katrina and razed to the ground. For most of the second…
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#5–A Shout in the Ruins: Heartlands Best Reads of 2019
Kevin Powers’ historical novel, A Shout in the Ruins, had me from the first paragraph. It’s not just that he told a gripping and heart-filled novel of my home state, Virginia, in the Civil War and mid-20th century eras. It’s also that Powers is an elemental writer who uses words to explosive effect, touching on the…
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In Memoriam: Walking Liberty for Pete Joyner
On December 14, 2019, a memorial service was held for my father, Ulysses Percy “Pete” Joyner, Jr., at Trinity United Methodist Church in Orange, Virginia. I shared this witness to his remarkable life. The last time my father remembered seeing his father was on an evening in May 1940. The family was reeling from the…
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The Writing Life–It Came for Me: Poetry
On visiting Hunterdale with kin long after Grandma died: It was pathetic to look at– Grandma’s glorious garden overgrown with grass. Her long back yard littered with automotive and boat wrecks. The scuppernong vines half the size they were back when. Still, amidst the mess, I could make out the spot where I first knew…
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Musicals, Monuments, and Historical Optimism: The Ed Ayers Interview concludes
Is there reason, as a historian, to be an optimist? Edward Ayers, among other things the co-host of the BackStory podcast and radio program, narrates a troubled chapter of American history in his latest book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America. In the first two segments…
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The Vicious State of Politics…Then: Ed Ayers on Heartlands-part 1 of 3
Edward Ayers is not only one of the nation’s preeminent interpreters of American History, he is a consummate storyteller and educator. Ayers is the Tucker Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond. His latest book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America won…
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A Tear for Bois Sauvage: A Review of Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
It’s not often that the ending of a book makes me moist-eyed. And I can’t ever recall when the acknowledgements did that. But there it was in the final sentences on page 289 of Sing, Unburied, Sing, the 2017 National Book Award-winning novel by Jesmyn Ward: “In closing, I’d like to thank everyone in my…
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Dismantle Confederate Memorials? Let’s Build Some Different Ones
A Robert E. Lee monument is dismantled in New Orleans. A torchlight rally in Charlottesville, Virginia to protect another one. A lieutenant governor candidate in Virginia calls for removing all Confederate memorials and renaming all highways and buildings named for Confederate leaders. William Faulkner had it right. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”…
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