Ageless Bards & Artful Icestorms
What's going on around WestVirginiaVille.com | feb26.2021
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1 | ‘Ice Storm, Transformed’
Here is the Great West Virginia Icestorm of 2021, re-imagined as a work of art. See the related photo essay at the link below, which ponders this whole business of artifying our photos and wonders: How much is too much? Plus, check out Bobby Lee Messer’s “Winter Walking,” a lovely, moody music-video, about a winter that goes on too long.
RELATED ARTICLE: How Do You Serve the Ice?
2 | ‘An Ageless Bard’
WestVirginiaVille.com photo-illustration
The storied life of Lawrence Ferlinghett came to a close Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, at the remarkable age of 101. I was blessed to interview this "ageless radical and true bard" in 1995 for The Charleston Gazette. What he had to say, not to mention his evocative poetry, remains pertinent, including his prescient insight into “the revenge of the white man” we’re living through right now. (This interview was one of my journalism career’s most successful Deep Poetry ops to inject poems into a daily newspaper).
READ ON: PARADIGM SHIFTING: Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Life in the Trenches of Poetry
Excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “I Am Waiting” (1958)
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic Western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world
safe for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder.
3 | Making Hay
Hayfields photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash
WestVirginiaVille is a collaborative creation whose work, we hope, resonates, echoes and produces pingbacks. After we posted a “photopoem” of a close encounter with West Virginia haybales (“When Hay Bales Speak to You”), Charleston WV poet James Cochran wrote back. He actually poemed-back. As a young man, he made hay in the hayfields and their windrows, all the while eyeing the skies:
READ ON: POEM: ‘Haymaking’
“Haymaking” by James Cochran
“Make hay while the sun shines” they say,
and we do, circling the field while swallows
dive and swoop to feast on insects we kick up,
inhaling the mingled sweetness of diesel fuel
and honeysuckle. We cut, rake, and bale
till the sun goes down and the dew settles on the fields,
then start again next morning once the dew burns off,
almost finishing as dark clouds build on the horizon
and fat drops of rain cut the dust on the Baler.
That’s the part no one says…
Make hay while the sun shines,
but stop when it starts to rain.
4 | ‘Misconceived’
Our new “One Work” series focuses on a single piece of creativity, created, concocted or channeled by someone with a connection to West Virginia. Beckley-based performer and artist Lady D kicks off the series recently with a piece she titled “Misconceptions.”
Lady D, describing “Misconceptions”:
“After the murder of George Floyd, I began working on canvas as another outlet for the many emotions I was dealing with at the time. I was originally going to call this piece, “Angry Black Woman” because it was pretty obvious by the hair.
“Then, I decided on “Misconceptions” because that’s how most Black women are viewed. It is a misconception that seems to have been perpetrated by a society that not only de-values us, but also fears our male children. Thus, the baby’s hair says “threat.” The place that I was in emotionally at the time was one where I wanted to represent the love and nurturing of a Black mother for her son, but also, she really IS angry because of the state of the world that he’s been born into.”
5 | ‘Chew This Way’
Seen in countless photos, ‘Chew Mail Pouch’ barn signs have became such an iconic, familiar image they’re almost impossible to see afresh. We give it a go in the short, experimental video "Chew This Way," from a close-encounter with a Mail Pouch barn while location shooting for our soon-to-be-released music video, “Be the Change” (see next item). The barn is found in Mason County WV on WV Route 2, just before the chemical plants as you head east out that way.
PS | Here comes “Be the Change”
At 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 4, WestVirginiaVille’s Facebook page (facebook.com/wvville) will host the world premiere of a music video of a wonderful and timely new song by Ron Sowell, leader of the Mountain Stage band and writing parter and fellow musician, Jon Wikstrom. WestVirginiaVille’s media production arm, TheStoryIsTheThing, crafted the video with multiple video shoots and drone footage from around the region, shot by our chief videographer Bobby Lee Messer. Subscribers to this free newsletter will get an advance look at the video on Wednesday, March 3.
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