Another South
Experimental Writing in the South
Edited by Bill Lavender; Introduction by Hank Lazer
SERIES:
Modern and Contemporary Poetics
University of Alabama Press
Gathers the best work of flourishing but often-neglected avant-garde southern poets
Another South is an anthology of poetry from contemporary southern writers who are working in forms that are radical, innovative, and visionary. Highly experimental and challenging in nature, the poetry in this volume, with its syntactical disjunctions, formal revolutions, and typographic playfulness, represents the direction of a new breed of southern writing that is at once universal in its appeal and regional in its flavor.
Focusing on poets currently residing in the South, the anthology includes both emerging and established voices in the national and international literary world. From the invocations of Andy Young’s “Vodou Headwashing Ceremony” to the blues-informed poems of Lorenzo Thomas and Honorée Jeffers, from the different voicings of John Lowther and Kalamu ya Salaam to the visual, multi-genre art of Jake Berry, David Thomas Roberts, and Bob Grumman, the poetry in Another South is rich in variety and enthusiastic in its explorations of new ways to embody place and time. These writers have made the South lush with a poetic avant-garde all its own, not only redefining southern identity and voice but also offering new models of what is possible universally through the medium of poetry.
Hank Lazer’s introductory essay about “Kudzu textuality” contextualizes the work by these contemporary innovators. Like the uncontrollable runaway vine that entwines the southern landscape, their poems are hyperfertile, stretching their roots and shoots relentlessly, at once destructive and regenerative. In making a radical departure from nostalgic southern literary voices, these poems of polyvocal abundance are closer in spirit to "speaking in tongues" or apocalyptic southern folk art—primitive, astonishing, and mystic.
Another South is an anthology of poetry from contemporary southern writers who are working in forms that are radical, innovative, and visionary. Highly experimental and challenging in nature, the poetry in this volume, with its syntactical disjunctions, formal revolutions, and typographic playfulness, represents the direction of a new breed of southern writing that is at once universal in its appeal and regional in its flavor.
Focusing on poets currently residing in the South, the anthology includes both emerging and established voices in the national and international literary world. From the invocations of Andy Young’s “Vodou Headwashing Ceremony” to the blues-informed poems of Lorenzo Thomas and Honorée Jeffers, from the different voicings of John Lowther and Kalamu ya Salaam to the visual, multi-genre art of Jake Berry, David Thomas Roberts, and Bob Grumman, the poetry in Another South is rich in variety and enthusiastic in its explorations of new ways to embody place and time. These writers have made the South lush with a poetic avant-garde all its own, not only redefining southern identity and voice but also offering new models of what is possible universally through the medium of poetry.
Hank Lazer’s introductory essay about “Kudzu textuality” contextualizes the work by these contemporary innovators. Like the uncontrollable runaway vine that entwines the southern landscape, their poems are hyperfertile, stretching their roots and shoots relentlessly, at once destructive and regenerative. In making a radical departure from nostalgic southern literary voices, these poems of polyvocal abundance are closer in spirit to "speaking in tongues" or apocalyptic southern folk art—primitive, astonishing, and mystic.
An upstart collection and it's high time.’
—C. D. Wright, author of Deep Step Come Shining
The poets I find interesting in Another South remain accessible enough that I can enjoy spending a little time with them. . . . I do hope Another South will open the doors to more innovative, yet lucid poetry.’
—Oyster Boy Review
Bill Lavender is Coordinator of the Low Residency MFA Program at the University of New Orleans, proprietor of Lavender Ink press, and author of Guest Chain and Look, the Universe is Dreaming.
Hank Lazer is professor of English at The University of Alabama and author of Days, Covid19 Sutras, Lyric & Spirit, and 3 of 10.
Hank Lazer is professor of English at The University of Alabama and author of Days, Covid19 Sutras, Lyric & Spirit, and 3 of 10.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Editor’s Introduction
Poetry Scouting Mission: At the Intersection of Southern and Experimental, by Hank Lazer
Roches Moutonnees
from The Bicameralization
[basic system code]
Heralds of the hurricane.)
Artificial Terra-cotta Skin Mutagen Mask of Humbaba/Humwawa
from Brambu Drezi, Book III
Message No. 32
Another
SEEing yu
Message No. 69
The Secret Brain
Proscenium Moon
Please the Carrots
Any Blue Movie
The Tao Sequence
Ride the High Country
Call Me ‘Shortchange’
Thong
Rio
Right Away
S’what Up
K-Doe Codas
In Referring to What Does Not Exist
sic transit gloria mundi
sic transit
Sic Transit
Economics of Metonymy: sic transit
sic transit
Economics of Metonymy
another
sic transit
Slate Roof Blues
Garden District Soubrette
November 1st
Customer #!
Houseboat Ferry
Up Tchoupitoulas Nom de Guerre
Cryptographiku for Jim L5ftwich
Mathemaku No. 17
Mathemaku for Beethoven
Reality
Summer Rain
A in I as was Blackening Read (Mandala)
Vigil
The Fire After Fire
Poem In Progress
The Old Poetess Makes a Child
Call and Response
Eatonton Tableaux
You Don’t Know What Love Is
Five Note Range of Sorrow
Ezekiel Saw de Wheel
Ellen Craft
Eyes of Soon Children
Glorious
Kind of Ransom
Past Qualm of Hours
Put together how it will
Who are you
White Soil
Cattails Along Red River
Cotton and Gladiolas
Habitat Photo
Buckles
U-turn
.22
A Note to Skip on Max and Maxine
from pentacl
from Days
from The New Spirit
Eleusis
ASLEEPING
plane song
barefoot/extinguish at will
“and I am lonely and small in all this, goodnight”
[untitled]
to abcs and from rimbaud
from no truck
solfège parasite
Not A Ton Notation
The Cages
Feeling Rosemary
Plate Pieces
Gongula
The Merchant’s Daughter
Dancing There
Uranium Ore
About the Extinction Of
Solstice / Surgery (12-21,22-99)
Unica Zurn’s Loam Bowl
Archipelago (Interra Diocesan)
Composition with Wire
Ode to Toge
assuage bane
Government and Binding
abusive! that’s the word!
Trigger D’evolution
“H. S. Mauberley (Life and Contacts)” Part I by Ezra Pound
“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman
“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” by William Blake
from What’s Your Sign?
“Romance Somnambulo” by Garcia Lorca
Tiff Belt Parley
Rodeo
Little Pilot Knob
I Mandate Ridges Raving
SOUND is ProFound Sense
THE MOMENT OF THE FIRST DAY
Poem with Referees
From the Mark Prejsnar Playbook
Rachel’s Recovery (Fucking with the Angels).
An Even-Tempered Girl Holds Her Breath
Dangerous Doubts
Blues Variations
Back in the Day
Magnetic Charms
Peerage
A Drunkard Promise
Of Riches
Duchess of Dogs
coarse rigors
Hope Chest
A Maid of Need
In Anguish, the Heart Finally Prays:
Foxfire
Ghost of Me
Vodou Headwashing Ceremony
from river we are caried by
Contributors | Poetics
Acknowledgments
Editor’s Introduction
Poetry Scouting Mission: At the Intersection of Southern and Experimental, by Hank Lazer
Roches Moutonnees
from The Bicameralization
[basic system code]
Heralds of the hurricane.)
Artificial Terra-cotta Skin Mutagen Mask of Humbaba/Humwawa
from Brambu Drezi, Book III
Message No. 32
Another
SEEing yu
Message No. 69
The Secret Brain
Proscenium Moon
Please the Carrots
Any Blue Movie
The Tao Sequence
Ride the High Country
Call Me ‘Shortchange’
Thong
Rio
Right Away
S’what Up
K-Doe Codas
In Referring to What Does Not Exist
sic transit gloria mundi
sic transit
Sic Transit
Economics of Metonymy: sic transit
sic transit
Economics of Metonymy
another
sic transit
Slate Roof Blues
Garden District Soubrette
November 1st
Customer #!
Houseboat Ferry
Up Tchoupitoulas Nom de Guerre
Cryptographiku for Jim L5ftwich
Mathemaku No. 17
Mathemaku for Beethoven
Reality
Summer Rain
A in I as was Blackening Read (Mandala)
Vigil
The Fire After Fire
Poem In Progress
The Old Poetess Makes a Child
Call and Response
Eatonton Tableaux
You Don’t Know What Love Is
Five Note Range of Sorrow
Ezekiel Saw de Wheel
Ellen Craft
Eyes of Soon Children
Glorious
Kind of Ransom
Past Qualm of Hours
Put together how it will
Who are you
White Soil
Cattails Along Red River
Cotton and Gladiolas
Habitat Photo
Buckles
U-turn
.22
A Note to Skip on Max and Maxine
from pentacl
from Days
from The New Spirit
Eleusis
ASLEEPING
plane song
barefoot/extinguish at will
“and I am lonely and small in all this, goodnight”
[untitled]
to abcs and from rimbaud
from no truck
solfège parasite
Not A Ton Notation
The Cages
Feeling Rosemary
Plate Pieces
Gongula
The Merchant’s Daughter
Dancing There
Uranium Ore
About the Extinction Of
Solstice / Surgery (12-21,22-99)
Unica Zurn’s Loam Bowl
Archipelago (Interra Diocesan)
Composition with Wire
Ode to Toge
assuage bane
Government and Binding
abusive! that’s the word!
Trigger D’evolution
“H. S. Mauberley (Life and Contacts)” Part I by Ezra Pound
“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman
“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” by William Blake
from What’s Your Sign?
“Romance Somnambulo” by Garcia Lorca
Tiff Belt Parley
Rodeo
Little Pilot Knob
I Mandate Ridges Raving
SOUND is ProFound Sense
THE MOMENT OF THE FIRST DAY
Poem with Referees
From the Mark Prejsnar Playbook
Rachel’s Recovery (Fucking with the Angels).
An Even-Tempered Girl Holds Her Breath
Dangerous Doubts
Blues Variations
Back in the Day
Magnetic Charms
Peerage
A Drunkard Promise
Of Riches
Duchess of Dogs
coarse rigors
Hope Chest
A Maid of Need
In Anguish, the Heart Finally Prays:
Foxfire
Ghost of Me
Vodou Headwashing Ceremony
from river we are caried by
Contributors | Poetics
