This week after Tuesday Morning Prayer and Eucharist, Sister Elizabeth handed me a copy of a new addition to St. Mary’s Convent library. She passed the book along because she thought I might be interested in the unique trilogy of books by graphic artist Lynd Ward: God’s Man, Madman’s Drum, and Wild Pilgrimage. As narratives depicted in woodcuts, the images in the volume are taken from original woodblocks or “first generation electrotypes” rendered by Ward. Son of a Methodist minister and a political organizer, Ward also worked in watercolor, lithography, and mezzo tint. The closest pictorial narratives to Ward's work that I’ve read have been cartoons, and this book of wood engravings fascinated me – mostly because it’s wordless.
God’s Man, told in art deco and expressionist style, is an allegorical story about a young artist struggling to remain true to his art while facing the temptations of commercialism. He ultimately delivers his soul to a dark stranger in exchange for a paintbrush that will help him create great works of art. The narrative becomes familiar to serious readers as a contemporary version of Faust.
Madman’s Drum really baffled me, but after looking for expositions of the story, I discovered that it’s a depiction of a family with a history of violence, taken through several generations.
Wild Pilgrimage presents the story of a young factory worker trying to escape from the societal problems of the 1930’s. Burdened with the close space of urban life, the worker flees to the wilderness in search of a refuge.
The three graphic novels constitute one volume and are enhanced by several essays explaining the stories written by Ward himself. Ward relates that pictorial narratives range in time from the period of Egyptian wall decorations to contemporary comic strips, and the work begins with “an almost obsessive concentration on some aspect of the human condition that keeps nudging the imagination until …a single figure emerges…and soon there is movement and things begin to happen…”
Comic books have always intrigued me, and the dark non-verbal stories (no word balloons, folks!) by Ward captured my interest as they present a unique form of plot development through wood engravings.
On a lighter note, my appreciation of graphic novels, or the comics, was nurtured by my father who read them aloud on Sundays. For your amusement, this poem entitled “Reading the Sunday ‘Funny Papers’” taken from my only book of rhyming poetry, Grandma’s Good War, published several years ago:
“Reading the Sunday Funny Papers”
He could press 4,000 pounds and sometimes 36 tons
and enlisted in “the mighty Navy” in 1941,
muscled arms riddled with tattoos, arch enemies he’d foil
in “arful” battles designed to impress his Olive Oyl.
Each Sunday at the oak dining table my father read aloud
the adventures of Popeye the sailor man whom he avowed
could handle any enemy who dared to invade the States,
a spinach-eating hero to all his admiring shipmates,
father shouting at the end of each strip, “zap, pow and bam,”
quoting Popeye’s “I yam what I yam, that’s all I yam,”
affirmation of father’s individuality, a message belying the cartoon,
with Popeye, he was ready to battle Sea Hag, Bluto, and Alice the Goon.
His somber voice deepened, describing the cold cruel war he knew
as that of Little Orphan Annie, another comic icon of W.W.II.
who formed Jr. Commandos and blew up a German U-boat,
enlisted us to collect scrap metal to keep the U.S. Navy afloat.
On her arm, Lil Annie wore a band with “JC” inscribed upon it,
called herself “Colonel Annie” and demanded we do our bit.
“Gee Whiskers,” my father’s voice would sometime resound,
“She’s left Daddy Warbucks! Poor girl’s on shaky ground.”
Alley Oop in the Kingdom of Moo who traveled to the moon,
Prince Valiant, the Nordic Prince who fought the hated Huns,
Dagwood, Blondie, Lil Abner… the Golden Age of comic strips
where our father took us on astonishing Sunday morning trips,
life served up in weekly installments of strange cartoons,
accented by his voice ascending on floating word balloons.”
Grandma’s Good War is available on www.amazon.com or at http://borderpressbooks.com.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
ALCHEMY
“The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There’s a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.’ And so it starts…” – Joseph Campbell, writing in A Joseph Campbell Companion –When I was eleven years old, sitting at an old wooden desk bolted to the floor in a small-town schoolhouse (just one serious girl among a bunch of pre-adolescent kids in Sleepy Land, I might add), I wrote my first poem. It was one of the few rhyming poems I’ve written during my lifetime, and I can remember only a few lines about “my home away from the town’s noisy din,/away from the roar of the cotton gin…” Yes, I know, there was a lot of room for improvement there!
I didn’t know Joseph Campbell existed or that he would speak to me in the above quotation about the hero’s journey many years later; that on two occasions, he’d reinforce the adventure of poetry that, for me, began at age eleven and now defines my authentic writing life.
At 76 years of age, I ponder Campbell’s words again, hoping that I’ve moved out and found a way for the domain of literature to receive what I’ve been given to give, that there’s “enough of me there” and that I’ve served life in one of the ways it is to be served–using the gift of poetry. Perhaps at 80, I will announce, as Confucius did, “I know my ground and stand firm.”
Alchemy, my 29th book publication and my 13th book of poetry to be published, will appear in a few weeks. I’m hoping that this poetry about the Louisiana oil spill… a fellow poet… a Haitian orphan… ruminations about nature, animals, death, and philosophical questions will find its way onto your bookshelves. The cover painting for Alchemy was rendered by my brother Paul and designed by my grandson Martin.
The book can be ordered from Border Press, P. O. Box 3124, Sewanee, Tennessee 37375 or online at www.amazon.com after 15 August 2011.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
NEW IBERIA’S FOUNDING FATHER
Visitors to New Iberia, Queen City of the Teche, frequently and mistakenly view the city as a town settled by Acadians, but the flatboats that came up the Teche in 1779 were, in fact, propelled by Malaguenos who arrived at the bend in the bayou near the upper limits of New Iberia. A former New Iberia historian, Maurine Bergerie, who wrote They Tasted Bayou Water, tells us that the Malaguenos camped under a large live oak that stood at the intersection of Darby Lane and the St. Martinville highway. Members of the Romero, Villatoro, Segura, Ortiz, and other families from Malaga were led by Lieutenant Colonel Don Francisco Bouligny who had been sent by King Charles II of Spain to the Attakapas District of Louisiana to establish a settlement.
Today, at a different location on Main Street in New Iberia, a bust of Bouligny and a historic plaque, located behind the gazebo in the city plaza, identify him as putative founder of Nueva Iberia, and other historians claim that the City Plaza marks the gently sloping site of the original Malaguenos landing on Bayou Teche. Regardless of the site designated for the original settlement of New Iberia, Bouligny is honored as the visionary leader of the Queen City.
Who was this man who empowered a small group of Malaguenos to leave their sunny country and travel to a swampy, uncharted area of Louisiana where floods, hurricanes, and mosquitoes abounded, to build huts constructed of sticks stuck in the ground and covered with palmettos? Bouligny, their intrepid leader, wrote to Louisiana’s Spanish governor, Galvez, that Louisiana was an area which contained grass so thick that a single team of oxen couldn’t make an opening to the prairie stretching beyond.
Earlier in the year of 1779, Bouligny had attempted to establish a settlement close to a tribe of Chitimacha Indians and near the town of present-day Charenton. However, during a typical rainy Spring in April, Bayou Teche inundated the settlement and the tribal Native American villages with almost eight feet of water. Undaunted, Bouligny and his band of Malaguenos moved to the present site of New Iberia, which was then ten feet above the cresting level of Bayou Teche. After overseeing the building of rude shelters, he ordered flax and hemp seeds from Governor Galvez, and the settlers planted them. When these crops failed, they turned to raising cattle in an area near what is now called Spanish Lake. According to Maurine Bergerie, the colonists who settled New Iberia were not granted concessions but gained possession of their land by the public surveyor. Later, following the Louisiana Purchase, these families had to obtain recognition of their land titles from the U.S. government.
Just before Bouligny began his adventure to Louisiana, his wife gave birth to Francisco Joseph Ursino, and Bouligny was able to witness the baptism of his son before departing for the New World. After the settlement became established, Governor Galvez offered to bring Dona Bouligny to New Iberia to live. Bouligny thanked him graciously and never brought his wife to the primitive town on Bayou Teche.
In 1853, a single account describing Bouligny’s appearance was written by Benjamin French in his Historical Memoirs of Louisiana. He describes the Colonel as “rather tall and slight, with a noble military bearing, easy and dignified in his manner and warm in his friendship. So mild and conciliatory were his actions that obedience went hand in hand with his command; while his ardor and zeal for the service of his country seemed rather to reach the post of danger than to avoid it.” Historians question the accuracy of this flowery description, but the words certainly imbue Bouligny with a heroic persona.
An unknown artist also painted a portrait of Bouligny and his wife Marie Louise, which is now in the Historic New Orleans Collection. No one knows the date the portrait was rendered, but historians surmise that it was painted when Bouligny came to Louisiana in 1777 as Lieutenant Governor of the State. An inventory in Bouligny’s succession indicates that he had numerous books in his personal library and that he was a cultured man of the 18th Century Enlightenment. Others alluded to him as a man of confidence who was determined to make a name for himself.
Bouligny encouraged the struggling Malaguenos to build new homes of mud and moss, to construct a Royal warehouse, and to raise stock. Fifteen years after the founding of New Iberia when Etienne Bore revolutionized the sugar industry by converting cane juice to sugar, the settlers began to grow the prolific sugar cane that remains a stable industry in Teche country.
In August, 1779, only a few months after Bouligny had secured a permanent settlement on the banks of the Teche, he received a report that Spain had declared war on England and that Governor Galvez had begun marshalling forces against the British forts on the Mississippi River. Bouligny gathered a group of the new settlers of New Iberia and joined the Governor’s forces. By September 3, he was at Plaquemine with a small army of twenty-five slaves, five soldiers, two deserters, two farmers, one militiaman, two volunteers, and two Americans, according to Gilbert Din, author of Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Bouligny.
While fighting the War of the Revolution, Bouligny received word that Nicholas Forstall had replaced him as commandant of Nueva Iberia. In 1800, he died in New Orleans just before becoming a brigadier general. After the war, he never returned to his little colony on Bayou Teche, but his settlement gradually flourished and has now become a city of 32,000 inhabitants. Today, New Iberia a model in acculturation of descendants of Spanish, French, Acadians, Indians, English, German, and Creoles who live side by side in a city settled by Don Francisco Bouligny and his courageous band of Malaguenos.
Note: My young adult book of fiction about Bouligny and the Malaguenos settling of New Iberia, entitled Flood on the Rio Teche, has been placed in the library at Alhaurin de la Torre, Spain, a place that has been twinned with New Iberia. The book was purchased and taken back to Spain by Manuel Lopez, an employee of the Department of Culture in Alhaurin de la Torre who visited New Iberia several years ago. Copies of this book can be purchased online with Border Press (www.borderpressbooks.com).
Photograph of Bouligny’s statue by Kelly Roark, VP of Operations, Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce, New Iberia, Louisiana.
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