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The Slate
Way back, the men had funny names
like Tiny, who was anything
but small, and Tiny’s son was called
Tiny Too or Double T,
and Tiny’s wife who was big and mean
was known as Honey, and everybody
called Honey’s sister, Birdie, and Birdie,
who couldn’t talk much less whistle,
was beautiful but touched in the head,
so Birdie lived with them way down
in Fog Town Holler, beside
the green waters of Shoestring Branch,
and only the land was rightly named,
for it was foggy half the day down there
and the branch was skinny and whipped across
the mossy roots and rocks like a snake;
but by the time I came along,
Tiny and Honey were already planted
and Birdie was bent-over and old
and Tiny Too was getting on
and sleeping in the chicken coop
with fourteen chickens and a rooster
named Mister Sump, and Sump was short
for Something, and Tiny Too just said
he liked the company, and besides
he had to guard the chickens against
Redleg Johnny who was a fox,
because Mister Sump was only good
at making chickens, and Tiny Too
would have winked about that sort of thing,
and all of this—I learned it young,
when I was just a scratch of a boy
and I skipped down Shoestring Branch
to Fog Town Holler and found
Old Tiny Too, who told me where
I was from, and who my people were,
and how they named the world around them.
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Maurice Manning's eighth book of poems, Snakedoctor, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2023. His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize, and his first book, Lawrence Booth's Books of Visions, was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. A former Guggenheim fellow, Manning lives with his family on a small farm in Kentucky and teaches at Transylvania University.
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Angelo Maria Crivelli, Animals Scene. 17th-Century. Oil on canvas.
Excellent. Thank you!
“The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties..." --Wm Blake
Posted by: Jack Skelley | March 26, 2023 at 09:54 AM
A delight to read. Every name hypnotic in the way each so aptly playfully generates the next.
Posted by: Michael Whelam | March 26, 2023 at 10:23 AM
The accuracy of human country words, entangling us with the critters around us, what we have to know to understand the losses climate crisis can bring, the relationships that could be lost but do not have to be lost.
Posted by: Minnie Bruce Pratt | March 26, 2023 at 10:28 AM
Ah Genesis! And the naming of things! But it takes a true poet to say:
..."and Birdie,
who couldn’t talk much less whistle."
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | March 26, 2023 at 11:54 AM
I love this poem. One can picture the people and their animals in their special place.
Posted by: Eileen | March 26, 2023 at 12:21 PM
This is such a wonderful and nostalgic look at naming, Maurice! It's making me remember my father's friend Swift who walked with a limp.
Posted by: Denise Duhamel | March 26, 2023 at 01:09 PM
I am seriously in love with this poem —so much so I long to ask the Adamlike namer how come the fox is called Redlegs— did me forget to put on his black socks???
Posted by: Clarinda | March 26, 2023 at 01:28 PM
lovely in its precision and poignancy
Posted by: lally | March 26, 2023 at 01:41 PM
i meant in its poignant precision
Posted by: lally | March 26, 2023 at 01:43 PM
Good one!
Posted by: Susan Campbell | March 26, 2023 at 11:49 PM
So appropriately named. I remain entertained. Thank you, Terence. You continue to deliver.
Posted by: Doug Pell | March 27, 2023 at 07:42 AM
Doug: Thanks for tuning in.
Posted by: Terence Winch | March 27, 2023 at 08:55 AM
Loved the mythical feeling of this.
Posted by: Thomas E. Davis | April 01, 2023 at 01:54 PM