The Milkweed Ladies (review)

Children, we know this fox and why he dances Ironic sarabands, tawny and white, Balancing tail and toe, his black pads lifted To hold in place that Oriental delight, His hat. . . . He is bawdy, in a poem entitled "Hot Stuff," and witty in a series of Foibles for Critics which includes Faulkner: Here's Troy burned and Agamemnon's fits Served up with black-eyed peas, hog jowls, and grits. and Frost: He scythes the landscape with one sure slice To show us hell beneath New England ice. The thirty-five "Richmond Hill Sonnets ," named after a place on the west bank of the French Broad River, near Asheville, North Carolina, are extremely well-crafted; yet within the discipline of strict form, they embody the qualities conspicuous in all of Hulme's work: earthiness, humor, and mystery, along with accessibility. The Richmond Hill Sonnets begin: Darling, if you were not already dead, You'd die to know I've put you in a book. I see you now, tossing your pretty head, Giving me what we called your country look. In his life and in his art Hulme combined warmth and generosity with graceful expression. He writes in a poem entitled "With a Posthumous Gift : And if I die before I wake, Come, good doctor, come and take These fond old eyes, that they may brighten Another's world, that they may lighten A brother's stumble in the dark When I am stumbleless and stark. Francis Pledger Hulme's poems are a posthumous gift to eyes with which we may better see our world. -Jim Wayne Miller McNeill, Louise. The Milkweed Ladies. Pittsburgh, PA: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. A Greenbrier County accountant, Gayle Mason, volunteered to type the original manuscript of this book, and when Louise McNeill was recovering from an accident, Maggie Anderson, a young West Virginia poet, took on the job of editing it and acting as agent. These volunteers pitched in, like the mountaineers of McNeill's poetry often have done when a neighbor needed help, out of love and respect for this wonderful lady, who happens to be the poet laureate of West Virginia, whose family stretching back nine generations, or 200 years, have worked the Swaeo Farm along the Greenbrier River. McNeill is loved because she is a lover-of the people of West Virginia in their strengths and their foibles, of the land that has been both foreboding and bountiful. McNeill's first collection of poems, Gauley Mountain, appeared in 1939 (Harcourt Brace) with a foreword by Stephen Vincent Benet. Her four other collections include Paradox Hill and Elderberry Flood. Her poems have commanded national publishers and audiences , and she is a winner of the Atlantic Monthly Poetry Prize. In this gentle memoir, or autobiography , Ms. McNeill tells of interesting and very human members of her family: Grandpa Tom, who was with George Rogers Clark at Kaskaskia; Uncle Bill, who went up against Cornstalk and his Shawnee warriors at Point Pleasant; Little Uncle John, who had served in the War of 1812; Captain Jim, who had been a Virginia Confederate, his brother a Yankee; and her father George (named after General George Patton's grandfather ), who sailed with Teddy Roosevelt; Granny Fanny, crotchety and capable, in her Japanese kimono for the singing of songs, or in calico for picking berries or plums; and Aunt Malindy, in black satin, who "boarded" with them but nevei did a lick of work. 63 The title of the book comes from the little milkweed seeds with their white skirts that carry them afar. McNeill writes: In the late summer, when the long, delicate green milkweed pods were full, we would strip off the outer pods and carefully take out the silky white insides. These were our "milkweed ladies," as pure and delicate as soft white dove-birds, there on our rock cliff in the sun. We would invite them to "tea," and crowded three of them sitting so ladylike on our moss sofa; and we in our millinery hats serving them. Most of the book is about departed family members who still live in stories, the natural beauty of McNeill's place, about farming, gathering...