The Southern states are oft-maligned. Ah, yes: “flyover country” with its masses of uneducated religious nuts, known for shooting squirrels and wrangling rattlesnakes. Despite the dismal reputation, the South broadly preserves a wonderful kind of poetry that offers flavor in what can be a sadly bland and homogenous world.
What is meant by poetry?
Consider the exquisite lyricism and narrative of country music. Not the recent sad attempts of the country posers of the world, but the established legends of classic and contemporary country music. Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton just might be the most gifted songwriters of recent years. There’s a reason they call George Strait “King George” in parts of Texas. Poetry. Pathos. Ballad. Beat. They bring it all.
And as for the accusation that all country songs are the same and the tropes are tired, such slights become jokes in the canon of country music, wonderfully self-aware playfulness that is downright fun. Take, for example, David Allan Coe in “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” In the stirring crescendo, he narrates and sings:
Well, a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song
And he told me it was the perfect country & western song
I wrote him back a letter and I told him it was not the perfect country & western song
Because he hadn’t said anything at all about mama
Or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting’ drunk
Well, he sat down and wrote another verse to the song and he sent it to me
And after reading it I realized that my friend had written the perfect country & western song
And I felt obliged to include it on this album
The last verse goes like this here
Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got run over by a damned old train
Truly inspired. Memorable. How many times in an ordinary day do you remember to laugh heartily? How often does your brain feel tickled by amusing turns of phrase and newfound perspective? If you’re lacking, there is always country music.
Of course, through the marvels of modern technology, you can listen to country music anywhere. What is unique about living in the South, broadly defined? It is the warmth and poetry that seeps into everyday life and interactions.
At the pool the morning after a thunderstorm took the edge off the early summer heat, a slim little boy of four with long, curly hair shivered as he tried to escape the swim team laps. When his father noticed the boy was cold and trying to climb out, he called confidently across the pool, “Hey, Bubba, did you forget the heat’s in the work?”
What a marvelous turn of phrase, shared with a young child who understood the poetic construction without question. Every region, it is true, has its unique way of talking and expressing reality, capturing ordinary experience in poetic expression. In the South, however, there is little doubt that, at least for some, the tradition is alive and well and likely to transmit to another generation.
