Nothing Must Be Lost: Regional Identity and Dialogue in the Works of Edwina Pendarvis and Llewellyn McKernan

ESSAY Nothing Must Be Lost: Regional Identity and Dialogue in the Works of Edwina Pendarvis and Llewellyn McKernan Marianne Worthington In a pluralistic society like ours, where we are urged to recognize and tolerate various perspectives and aesthetic sensibilities, so that we can participate in an open and inclusive society, the critic often finds herself in a bind the minute she starts to label or categorize her text under study. Thus, how do we justify talking about "women's poetry" or "Appalachian poetry" or even about "two Appalachian women poets from West Virginia" without alienating and excluding? Perhaps we can't, but I believe that one benefit of adopting a pluralistic viewpoint is that in calling attention to differing perspectives and worldviews we help to shrink the margins of society. Thus, knowing about women's poetry, or Appalachian poetry, or even about two Appalachian women poets from West Virginia assumes importance and increases the status of those perspectives. I hope to achieve that goal in this essay by illustrating how the poetry of West Virginian women poets Edwina Pendarvis and Llewellyn McKernan forges a regional and communal identity, fosters a dialogue with readers, and fashions a shared life, history and culture of the Appalachian region. I want to begin by introducing Pendarvis's poem "Losses," from which I took the title of this essay: I touched the Pacific Ocean, a young man said, and his mother, dizzy at the distance between them, smiled into the phone, remembering how, when he was five— towheaded, wide-eyed, he wouldn't throw anything out: no broken toys, not the boxes they came in, no outgrown clothes, nor dead batteries, no Coke cans or candy wrappers. 7 Nothing of his could go. Everything must be stacked up, packed up, stuck in bags, tucked in drawers, safely put away and kept close by— nothing must be lost. (90) This poem illustrates several of the concepts I want to discuss in the poetry of Pendarvis and Llewellyn McKernan, namely how those poems engage the reader by forming connections, rescuing the lost, and coupling a personal and collective history. To frame my remarks, I'm borrowing a concept from contemporary poet and critic Alicia Ostriker's essay, "The Nerves of a Midwife: Contemporary American Women's Poetry," which she expands in her later text, Stealing the Language: The Emergence ofWomen's Poetry in America. Ostriker outlines four elements central to women's poetry: first, the quest for autonomous self-definition; that is, defining oneself as authentically as possible from within; second, the intimate treatment of the body, particularly to tell the truth about anatomy; third, the release of anger, or what poet Eleanor Wilner calls the protest against the public silence so long imposed on generations ofwomen. Wilner believes "The Great Silence," a huge reservoir of unspoken inner life of the female past, is what drives and energizes most contemporary poetryby women (xxv). While all these elements are found in the poetry of Pendarvis and McKernan, the concept I want to use in this analysis is what Ostriker names as the fourth component of women's poetry: "the contact imperative" ("The Nerves" 322). The contact imperative are those elements in a poem which cultivate mutuality, continuity, identification, touch, and the union between generations. The contact imperative also imposes an inescapable intimacy on the reader. This notion of the contact imperative is not unlike what language scholars identify as a feminine mode of discourse. Those who have studied the language uses of men and women generally agree that because males and females tend to be socialized into distinct speech communities, they learn different language rules. While men have learned to use language to exert control, preserve independence, to entertain, and to solve problems, linguists have found that women tend to use language as the primary means for establishing and maintaining relationships with others. Women like to match experiences, and their language use tends to foster connections, support, closeness, equality, understanding and invitation (Wood 125-30). This is not to say that all women and only women speak and write in a diametrical or contrary way to men. Nor am I advocating to privilege women poets over men, or...