Pictured above is the author and James Dickey, June 24, 1995. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Each January, my thoughts turn to a fellow Georgian. James Dickey died January 19, 1997, of the same disease that took my mother’s life. On June 24, 1995, I interviewed Dickey for ReckonContinue Reading
Photo: Osprey at Anthony Shoals with a fish too big to lift. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Three birds hold me in their thrall. The osprey, whippoorwill, and oft-slighted buzzard. I love the whippoorwill’s lilting call. The noble osprey and its distinctive M-shaped wings stands out, and the utilitarianContinue Reading
The snow of 2010 in Columbia. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net A thirteen-year relationship was dying. The song seemed written for us. Here comes one of those songs that arrives at a hurtful time. You grieve, heal, stumble into new entanglements, regret and vow never again, and before youContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net A restless boy grew up in the midst of forests and pastures. Outside of biking, reading, and exploring woods, the Augusta Highway entertained me. If Rambling Man was born on the back seat of a bus rolling down Highway 41, traffic rolling down HighwayContinue Reading
Photo: Collards — A field of memories, good eating, and more. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Being the chap I was, collard greens’ smell and similarity to the stringy dark-green algae in fish ponds repulsed me. Mom would cook up a mess and sit it before me. I’d dragContinue Reading
Photo: My grandmother and mother’s cornbread mold with an ear of Bradford heirloom corn. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Born of fire, master of fire, and survivor of fire, my vintage cast iron cornbread mold fed many a soul. Best I figure it came to be in the 1930s.Continue Reading
Something about a rainy winter day fires up the imagination. For some. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I have long admired the work of a fighter pilot turned writer. He wrote under the pen name James Salter. James Arnold Horowitz volunteered for combat duty in Korea and flew moreContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Photo: The ash door to the smokehouse in Historic Brattonsville. To some, the smokehouse remains a symbol of the impoverished, rural South. Not me. I see it as a rustic savior, and I thank the late Harry Crews for my column’s title. I recalledContinue Reading
My lost geisha By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net It was the photograph in my father’s war album. Her white kimono. Hair black as onyx. Pale, serene face. Perfect bone structure. Gloss, a sheen upon her hair. On one side, a nameless GI. On the other, my father, not muchContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Photographs speak if you listen to them. That curling, cracked Polaroid of your deceased uncle and aunt tells a story as surely as the photos of Iwo Jima and V-J Day in Times Square images do. A world entire lives inside the four wallsContinue Reading