Virginia: Mattie Quesenberry Smith
Episode 28 of The Laureate Project—on Vienna sausages, histological learnings, and the joys of handwriting.
When I say the mountains, of course, I mean everything. So, the hollows and the peaks—everything you hear, see, taste, touch, and feel. And an excitement for surprise.
Pay attention to the varied settings, and something holds you until you can’t quite get away. You find yourself planted in awe and examination of elevation and fish and the magnetism of certain tactile rituals. So you fail to leave until it’s settled: this is your place, with its many worlds open to explore. Virginia is Mattie Quesenberry Smith’s place and her focus for this next dive into The Laureate Project.
The River Nest
I
Daddy sits me under a willow inside its river nest.
I get a can of worms, Zebco reel, and a dip net.
I am happy to sit inside the river nest, until I forget
What time the sun throws shadows into the long stretch.
New River rises with the dam’s release. As it resets,
The water climbs toward my bare toes, well-met.
Casting across the river, I don’t have to think about my backsets,
Backseats, either. The weighted hook drops dead
Onto the river bottom. My night crawlers, wriggling and stacked,
On the hook, stink to high heaven, stink enough for any blue-black channel cat.
II
You catch one, you get me to get it off the hook, he said
From deep inside the waving reedbed, as he unhooked
A smallmouth bass. Red eyes, blue gills, pumpkin seeds,
Bass, crappie, mudcats, channel cats, horney heads,
We had good reasons to miss school nights and sleep late in bed.
Well after dark, we would pull the truck into the front yard
And unload all the tackle, him telling Mom, Redhead,
We got plenty for the freezer, and not a one of them dead.
Time to scale ‘em fresh! Swim bladder, lungs, blood-red eggs,
Stomachs, livers, spleens, they all got dragged out before bed.
Laced with fins and scales, the cutting board turned blood-red
With nature’s sacrifices, all of them flayed so we could get fed.
Courtesy of Mattie Quesenberry Smith.
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Featured Sound:
"Preparations" | Staffan Carlen | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
"Feeding the Fire" | American Legion | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
"Waking up in Castelnuovo" | Jay Taylor | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
“Nature sounds to go to sleep- late spring, early summer Virginia mountains 3 hours 48 minutes” | John Birmingham | youtube.com/watch?v=vkBsGn19sWI
So one question I have about the entire series is where do you find the list of Poets Laureate? There has to be a Wikipedia article somewhere. And then the question is, how do you find these people? How do you reach out to them? how do you get their phone numbers? Or email addresses?