Read a sample of Jane Hicks' poetry below.
Jane Hicks, a native of East Tennessee, is an award-winning poet and quilter. She won the 2002 Appalachian Poetry Contest sponsored by Now & Then magazine and the James Still Award for Poetry from the Appalachian Writers Association. Her first book, Blood and Bone Remember: Poems from Appalachia (2005), met with popular and critical acclaim, winning the Appalachian Writers Association Poetry Book of the Year prize; it was also nominated for the Weatherford Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association. Her poetry has frequently appeared in journals and literary magazines and her poems have been anthologized.
Her "literary quilts" illustrate the works of playwright Jo Carson and novelists Sharyn McCrumb and Silas House. The art quilts have toured with these respective authors and were the subject of a feature in Blue Ridge Country Magazine.
Hicks is retired from Sullivan County, Tennessee schools. She is putting the finishing touches on her first novel, tentatively titled Daughter of Necessity.
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The Ryman Auditorium, 1965
by Jane Hicks
I pouted and whined the whole three hundred miles,
would have kicked and screamed, except a sound
spanking follow. While Ed Sullivan touted the Beatles,
Elvis swivelled across the silver screen, daddy savored
the High Lonesome on thick 78s and slow turning
albums. Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, droning banjos,
chirpy mandolins, crying fiddles drowned out
my Rolling Stones. Our family flew down Bloody 11-W,
rain-slicked and glittery, toward Nashville to sit
on curved church benches high in the Confederate Gallery,
where funeral home fans pumped frantic rhythms to G-runs,
arthritic elbows bumped smooth-skinned young,
Beatle bangs mixed with brush cuts, lost in acoustic paradise.
I fumed, muttered, and strained to sit still. Flatt and Scruggs
ripped a swift set, caught my ear, then called her out to play
what my heart and bones remembered, Elvis and Paul forgotten,
I gave into melody and line, riveted to that pew
while Maybelle whipped that guitar into submission.
Reprinted with permission from Shenandoah, Fall 2006
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How We Became Cosmic Possums
(Suburban Appalachian Baby Boomers)
by Jane Hicks
Caught between Country Club and 4-H,
Neither shrimp nor crawdad,
Neither hip nor hillbilly,
Neither feedsack nor cashmere.
Neither shrimp nor crawdad,
Daddy punched the time clock,
Neither feedsack nor cashmere
Worked weekend tobacco on Grandpa's farm.
Daddy punched the time clock,
First generation out of the holler,
Worked weekend tobacco on Grandpa's farm,
Saved for our college diplomas.
First generation out of the holler,
Veterans who never spoke the horror,
Saved for our college diplomas,
Television lullabies shaped weary dreams.
Veterans who never spoke the horror,
Stanley thermos and lunch pail full,
Television lullabies shaped weary dreams,
Believed our country always right.
Stanley thermos and lunch pail full,
Feared beatniks, hippies, and Communists,
Believed our country always right,
Scorned unions in the plant.
Feared beatniks, hippies, and Communists,
Secretly applauded our highest draft numbers,
Scorned unions in the plants,
Wars they never spoke of, fierce dreams.
Secretly applauded our highest draft numbers,
Searched the skies for nuclear rain,
Wars they never spoke of, fierce dreams,
Built fallout shelters for our future.
Searched the sky for nuclear rain,
We learned to "duck and cover,"
Built fallout shelters for our future.
Became the hippies our fathers feared.
We learned to "duck and cover,"
Neither shrimp nor crawdad,
Became the hippies our fathers feared,
Caught between Country Club and 4-H.
Reprinted with permission from Wind magazine, Fall 1998.
THERE'S MORE:
-- Edison Jennings: "The Sympathy of Dust'
-- Back to Main story: Regional Poets Celebrate National Poetry Month
