Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet: Selections from the People Pieces (review)

Carson, Jo. Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet: Selections from the People Pieces. New York: Orchard Books, 1989. 96 pages. $12.95. Recent writings about Appalachia have made a concerted effort to de-mythologize the region while at the same time conveying the flavors and nuances of the loosely-termed "Appalachian experience ." It is a difficult yet vitally important task, and the results can be both illuminating and pleasurable, as is the case with Jo Carson's latest published collection of poetry. These pieces will be familiar to Carson's followers-about one-third have previously appeared in various regional journals, and she has used them in performance for several years. Old and new readers can therefore expect an engaging set of "monologues and dialogues" reconstructed by the author from what she has heard from ordinary people throughout Appalachia, particularly East Tennessee . Together the conversations suggest that life in the mountains these days amounts to what it was for Willis Comfort , the subject of the opening poem: "he made it through this world / the best way he knew how." Indeed, the emotions Carson has captured and organized in five sets of poems are most often uneasy or ambivalent. Her people talk knowingly about the region, its history, and the issues currently facing it. But they are less certain when it comes to deciding how best to respond to the changes that have so profoundly affected their individual lives, their families, and their communities . In one set of verses, a neighbor insists on turning the simple sharing of garden vegetables into a cash transaction ; a man's parents celebrate their new-found prosperity by replacing old furniture that will eventually amount to a fortune in antiques; a terrible cook prefers a cornbread recipe taken "from Chef Boy-ar-dee or somebody"; and relatives and residents generally spend considerable time trying to figure out who's still alive and where they are living . The reasons for such confusion, Carson's subjects assert, stem largely from economic development. "Progress " is destroying the forests, stereotyping mountain people, creating false promised lands called tourist towns, spinning a needlessly growing web of roads-and leading one teenager to declare that "I hope I die / before the only thing that's left / that takes your breath away / around here / is the smell." Appalachian residents are not entirely innocent, however: a black man notes that racial attitudes have not advanced very far since the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., and (in a personal favorite) an "outsider" questions the very meaning of the term when it is restricted to one's birthright and not to places like Kroger and K-Mart. Less obvious but just as keenly sensed is the personal impact of development. Here there is no talk of large, extended families living contentedly together. Instead there are women and men grappling with a mosaic of relationships that include patient, loving courtships as well as uncertain marriages, meddling inlaws , and divorces. The nature of work has undergone a similar transformation. There is still a pride in accomplishment and in providing a useful service. But there is also deep frustration, even bitterness , over the supposed options available to the poor, the destruction of land, the contamination of resources, the deadly danger of the workplace, and the sudden termination of jobs. As one figure pointedly asks, "who decided money is more valuable than people, / and why did all the rest of us agree to work that way?" The collection ends with ruminations on both the past and the future. The final poem, in which an aging mother calls for her distant child to come home to listen to her life's stories before they die with her, is a fitting ending, for through her poetry Carson is doing her part to preserve the voices of Appalachi71 ans who are more often analyzed than heard. -John Glen Chappell, Fred. Brighten the Corner Where You Are. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. $15.95. Reading Fred Chappell's new novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, is a little like eating turkey and dressing with chocolate ice cream on top: all the flavors are delicious, but how startling to...