Living with Ballads: Sidna Allen
Rent from DeepDyve- Living with Ballads:Sidna Allen
He mounted to the barwith a pistol in his handand he sent Judge Massieto the Promised Land:
the only mountain balladmy mother ever sangthe years that she was raising meon Pop Rocks and Tang,
and Grandmother thought secularmusic miles beneath her notice, so my mind is notone Stith Thompson motif
after another, not a greenwood thick with noble felons,no Gypsy Davies to seduce,no Barbara Allens,
just local Sidna, latein the murder song tradition,coming at you straightout of my mother's kitchen.
Ed. note: From Fire Baton, published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2006, and reprinted here with the author's permission.
Elizabeth Hadaway's work has appeared in Poetry and Shenandoah and is forthcoming in Cave Wall. Her first book, Fire Baton, was published in 2006. She lives near Baltimore and is a 2007 Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference.
