Listen Here (23 page)

(July 4, 1918–February 27, 2000)

Poet and lecturer Muriel Dressler was born in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in a small community southeast of Charleston called Witcher. She told editor William Plumley that she didn't finish high school. “Her real education, she was fond of saying, came at the heels of her mother in the cornfield, where she heard Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and the Bible recited,” Plumley said.

Dressler's goal as a writer, she once said, was to “record Appalachia without the sensationalism given it by writers outside the hills.” Popular as a lecturer on college campuses in the 1970s, she gave a reading at Harvard University in 1976.

Her first published poem, “Appalachia,” appeared in 1970, in the Morris Harvey College publication
Poems From the Hills
, edited by William Plumley. Her poem “Mountain Sarvis” appeared in the first issue of
Appalachian Journal
(1972). Her first poetry collection,
Appalachia, My Land
, contains her best-known poems, including her frequently cited poem “Appalachia,” for which she won the Appalachian Gold Medallion from Morris Harvey College (now the University of Charleston, West Virginia).

William Plumley writes that “Elegy for Jody” was “the centerpiece for the hour-long television drama
Morning Star, Evening Star
, written by Earl Hamner [creator of
The Waltons
] and produced by Lorimar in the 1980s.” Her papers are collected at West Virginia University in Morgantown.

Poetry:
Appalachia
(1977),
Appalachia, My Land
(1973).

Frances Carnahan, “Mountain Friends,”
Early American Life
8:4 (August 1977), 32–33. Avery Gaskins, “Notes on the Poetry of Muriel Miller Dressler,”
Things Appalachian
(1976), ed. William Plumley, Marjorie Warner, Lorena Anderson, 142–49.
Documentary film:
Behold the Land
, Public Broadcasting WPTV, Beckley, West Virginia.

from
Appalachia
(1977)

I am Appalachia! In my veins
Runs fierce mountain pride: the hill-fed streams
Of passion; and, stranger, you don't know me!
You've analyzed my every move—you still
Go away shaking your head. I remain
Enigmatic. How can you find rapport with me—
You, who never stood in the bowels of hell,
Never felt a mountain shake and open its jaws
To partake of human sacrifice?
You, who never stood on a high mountain,
Watching the sun unwind its spiral rays;
Who never searched the glens for wild flowers,
Never picked mayapples or black walnuts; never ran
Wildly through the woods in pure delight,
Nor dangled your feet in a lazy creek?
You, who never danced to wild sweet notes,
Outpourings of nimble-fingered fiddlers;
Who never just “sat a spell” on a porch,
Chewing and whittling; or hearing in pastime
The deep-throated bay of chasing hounds
And hunters shouting with joy, “he's treed!”
You, who never once carried a coffin
To a family plot high upon a ridge
Because mountain folk know it's best to lie
Where breezes from the hills whisper, “you're home;”
You, who never saw from the valley that graves on a hill
Bring easement of pain to those below?
I tell you, stranger, hill folk know
What life is all about; they don't need pills
To tranquilize the sorrow and joy of living.
I am Appalachia: and, stranger,
Though you've studied me, you still don't know.

from
Appalachia
(1977)

O, wear a crimson shawl, my child,
Put on a scarlet hood,
And make a point of being brave
When you explore the wood.

But when harsh winds denude the trees,
Fall leaves on cryptic ground
Will write your childhood's prophecy
In syllables of brown.

When dark clouds scud against the sky
And greening trees are gone,
I'll weave for you an ebon rug
For you to walk upon.

Then child, don heavy armor
Against the heart's wild pain;
Try as I may, I cannot bring
Fair April back again.

(October 25, 1860–September 1, 1934)

Will Allen Dromgoole was a poet, local color fiction writer, and playwright from Rutherford County, Tennessee. She served as Poet Laureate of Tennessee, and in 1930 she was appointed Poet Laureate of the Poetry Society of the South. A Boston editor asserted that “her love of the South is only surpassed by the affection she feels for the mountains and valleys of her dear old Tennessee.” Her work was popular in Boston and New York, as well as in the South.

Her parents, Rebecca Mildred Blanch Dromgoole and John Easter Dromgoole, moved to Tennessee from Brunswick County, Virginia, after their marriage. Her father wanted their seventh child to be a son and did not change his mind about the name William when he had a daughter. Dromgoole was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and named William Anne. She used “Will Allen” as her pen name for her first book and Will Allen Dromgoole for most of her other publications. Many readers assumed she was a male writer.

She graduated from the Female Academy of Clarksville, Tennessee, and worked for a while as a clerk for the Tennessee Senate. According to Boston's
Arena
editor, B.O. Flower, her first publication attempt won a prize from
Youth's Companion.

By one count, Dromgoole wrote 7,500 poems, 14 books, and a number of short stories. For nearly three decades, she was literary editor and author of the column “Song and Story” for the
Nashville Banner.
Her papers are collected at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Her collection
The Heart of Old Hickory and Other Stories of Tennessee
is available on-line at
http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/southlit.html
or
http://docsouth.unc.edu/dromgoole/menu.html
.

Fiction:
Short Stories
(1970),
The Island of Beautiful Things: A Romance of the South
(1912),
Harum-Scarum Joe
(1899),
Cinch, And Other Stories: Tales of Tennessee
(1898),
Hero-Chums
(1898),
A Moonshiner's Son
(1898),
Rare Old Chums
(1898),
The Valley Path
(1898),
The Heart of Old Hickory and Other Stories of Tennessee
(1895),
The Malungeons
(1891),
The Sunny Side of the Cumberland
[published under the name Will Allen] (1886).

B.O. Flower, “Preface,”
The Heart of Old Hickory and Other Stories of Tennessee
(1895). Vicki Slagle Johns, “Written With A Flourish: Tennessee's local color writers…”
The Tennessee Alumnus
(winter 1996), 18–20. Kathy J. Lyday-Lee, “Will Allen Dromgoole: A Biographical Sketch,”
Tennessee Historical Quarterly
51 (summer 1992), 107–12.

from Fiddling His Way to Fame

We had fallen in with a party of Alabama boys, and all having the same end in view—a good time—we joined forces and pitched our tents on the bank of the Clinch, the prettiest stream in Tennessee, and set about enjoying ourselves after our own approved fashion.

Even the important-looking gentleman, sitting over against a crag where he had dozed and smoked for a full hour, forgot, for the nonce, that he was other than wit and wag for the company; the jolly good fellow he, the free man (once more), and the huntsman.

Our division had followed the hounds since sun-up; the remainder of the company were still out upon the river with rod and line. The sun was about ready to drop behind Lone Mountain, that solitary peak, of nobody knows precisely what, that keeps a kind of solemn guard upon the wayward little current singing at its base. Supper was ready; the odor of coffee, mingled with a no less agreeable aroma of broiling bacon, and corn cake, was deliciously tantalizing to a set of weary hunters. But we were to wait for the boys, that was one of our rules, always observed. The sun set, and twilight came on with that subtle light that is half gloom, half glow, and mingled, or tried to, with the red glare of the camp-fire.

While we sat there, dozing and waiting, there was a break in the brush below the bluff upon which we were camped. “A deer!” One of the boys reached for his rifle, just as a tall, gaunt figure appeared above the bluff, catching as he came at the sassafras and hazel bushes, pulling himself up until he stood among us a very Saul in height, and a Goliath, to all seeming, in strength.

He took in the camp, the fire, and the group at a glance. But the figure over against the crag caught his best attention. There was a kind of telegraphic recognition of some description, for the giant smiled and nodded.

“Howdye,” he said; and our jolly comrade took his pipe from between his lips and returned the salutation in precisely the same tone in which it was given.

“Howdye; be you-uns a-travelin'?”

The giant nodded, and passed on, and our comrade dropped back against the crag, and returned to his pipe. But a smile played about his lips, as if some very tender recollection had been stirred by the passing of the gaunt stranger.

It was one of the Alabama boys who broke the silence that had fallen upon us. He had observed the sympathetic recognition that passed between the two men, and had noted the naturalness with which the “dialect” had been returned.

“I'll wager my portion of the supper,” he said, “that he is a Tennessean, and from the hill country.” He pointed in the direction taken by the stranger. He missed, however, the warning—“Sh!” from the Tennessee side.

“A Tennessee mountaineer—” he went on. “His speech betrayeth him.”

Then one of our boys spoke right out.

“Look out!” said he, “the Governor is from the hill country too.”

The silence was embarrassing, until the man over against the crag took the pipe from between his lips, and struck the bowl upon his palm gently, the smile still lingering about his mouth.

“Yes,” he said, “I was born among the hills of Tennessee. ‘The Barrens,' geologists call it; the poets name it ‘Land of the Sky.' My heart can find for it no holier name than—home.”

The Governor leaned back against the crag. We knew the man, and wondered as to the humor that was upon him. Politician, wit, comrade, gentleman; as each we knew him. But as native, mountaineer, ah! He was a stranger to us in that rôle. We had heard of the quaint ease with which he could drop into the speech of his native hills, no less than the grace with which he filled the gubernatorial chair.

He had “stumped the state” twice as candidate, once as elector. His strange, half-humorous, half-pathetic oratory was familiar in every county from the mountains to the Mississippi. But the native;—we almost held our breath while the transformation took place, and the governor-orator for the moment became the mountaineer.

“I war born,” he said, “on the banks o' the Wataugy, in the county uv Cartir,—in a cabin whose winders opened ter the East, an' to'des the sunrise. That war my old mother's notion an' bekase it war her notion it war allus right ter me. Fur she was not one given ter wrong ideas.

“I war her favorite chil' uv the seven God give. My cheer set nighest hers. The yeller yarn that slipped her shiny needles first slipped from hank ter ball across my sunburnt wrists. The mug uv goldish cream war allus at my plate; the cl'arest bit uv honey-comb, laid cross the biggis' plug uv pies war allus set fur me. The bit o' extry sweetnin' never missed my ole blue chiny cup.

An' summer days when fiel' work war a-foot, a bottle full o' fraish new buttermilk war allus tucked away amongst the corn pones in my dinner pail.

“An' when I tuk ter books, an' readin' uv the papers, an' the ole man riz up ag'inst it, bekase I war more favored ter the book nor ter the plough then my old mount'n mammy, ez allus stood ‘twixt me an' wrath, she riz up to, an' bargained with the ole man fur two hours uv my time. This war the bargain struck. From twelve er'clock ontil the sun marked two upon the kitchen doorstep I war free.

“Ever' day fur this much I war free. An' in my stid, whilst I lay under the hoss apple tree an' figgered out my book stuff, she followed that ole plough up an' down the en'less furrers across that hot ontrodd'n fiel'—in my stid.

“I've travelled some sence then, ploughed many a furrer in the fiel' o' this worl's troubles, an' I hev foun' ez ther' be few ez keers tur tek the plough whilst I lay by ter rest.

“An' when the work war done, an' harvest in, I tuk ter runnin' down o' nights ter hear the boys discuss the questions o' the day at Jube Turner's store over ter the settlemint.

“'Twar then the ole man sot his foot down.

”‘It hev ter stop!' he said. ‘The boy air comin' ter no good.'

“Then my ole mammy riz agin, an' set down ez detarmint ez him; an' sez she:—

“‘He be a man, an' hev the hankerin's uv a man. The time hev come fur me ter speak. The boy must hev his l'arnin'—books his min' calls fur. He aims ter mix with men; an' you an' me, ole man, must stand aside, an fit him fur the wrestle ez be boun' ter come. Hit air bespoke fur him, an' ther' ben't no sense in henderin' sech ez be bespoke beforehan'.'

“She kerried, an' I went ter school.”