Chapter 16

A Disturbing Sweetness

Poet Diann Blakely looks at the work of legendary Memphis photographer William Eggleston

By Diann Blakely | January 20, 2011

January 20, 2011 One of the most striking images in Michael Almereyda’s documentary film, William Eggleston in the Real World, also appears on the cover of the new Eggleston collection, For Now: Eggleston’s wife, Rosa, lies sleeping with a yellow-flowered duvet bunched across her middle, one slender, aristocratic hand holding the sheets in place near the pubic region. Has the couple just had sex? Rosa’s lovely long legs end in feet that appear slightly dirty; the room is small, dingy, and low-ceilinged. The gaping closet door has a pink, pocketed storage container hanging over the top, and a plastic, brown-nippled baby bottle sits on top of a staticky television. Remember when TV used to go “off the air” at night? There’s something yellow and disturbing about the portrait.

In Her Own Right

A poet considers the lasting influence of Eleanor Ross Taylor

By Diann Blakely | December 28, 2010

December 28, 2010 Diann Blakely met Eleanor Ross Taylor—poet and widow of Peter Taylor—nearly twenty years ago in Sewanee, Tennessee. For years, until Mrs. Taylor’s age and health began to limit her activity, the two renewed their friendship each summer in Sewanee, writing letters in between. On the publication of Taylor’s Captive Voices, Blakely remembers the poet who gave her the best advice of her life. In 2010, her 91st year, Eleanor Ross Taylor won the Poetry Society’s prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (and $100,000) and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

"Before the Flood: A Solo From New Orleans"

By Diann Blakely | November 5, 2009

Diann Blakely, the author of three poetry collections, is a graduate of both the University of the South and Vanderbilt University. She studied at New York University, Harvard, and Boston University before earning an MFA from Vermont College. While still a work in progress, Cities of Flesh and the Dead, from which this poem is excerpted, won the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award.

Alive and Well—in Sewanee and Elsewhere

Wyatt Prunty explains why reports of poetry’s death have been greatly exaggerated

By Diann Blakely | October 2, 2009

“I am able to report that poetry is alive and well today, and that it is highly varied in technique and subject,” observes Wyatt Prunty. “I enjoy the proof of that every July here in Sewanee.”

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly