I really appreciate you all giving me forty
five whole minutes to read.
That's unusual.
I like that.
I'm going to take it all.
Let's see.
I want to read a few--
some Southern poems from my North Carolina book.
Just a few interspersed with these ballads.
This is called, "Double Southern Register."
"Double Southern Register".
I think of it as sort of a name of a mythical newspaper.
"Here in the Appalachians, the phrase 'I don't care,' gives
consent.
Form follows function.
Form mirrors function.
The Mace family chair is said to quote "make the sitter forget
about chairs."
Meaning chairs are ruined for you.
Once you've sat in one you can sit in no other.
In Northern, it's 'forget about it.'
I once wrote, 'Tomatoes like warm bleeding hearts,' after
tasting tomatoes fresh picked from a hot North Carolina
garden and could eat no other after that.
Grocery store pallid ghostlike like hothouse ones
did nothing for me.
But songs are made from that rarefied material.
Language that gives them a different nature.
An antique that cannot be contained, stroked or sold.
A coverlet that will not rot nor unravel."