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    Tribal Magic
    Tribal Magic
    Tribal Magic
    Ebook81 pages33 minutes

    Tribal Magic

    By Don A. Hoyt

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    About this ebook

    Catharine Wagner contends “indeterminacy is [now] our era’s dominant style and can no longer be seen as radical.” By indeterminacy, she means poetry based on disembodied language; or, perhaps, an etiology based on ideology. In the recent past, to be successful, the poet has needed only to be confused and a member, at least figuratively, of the “lost generation.”

    Not so, Hoyt. Harking back to Stevens, Lowell, Winters, and Duncan, his poems attempt to make some sense out of the experiences of his life. And he uses language, guided by thought, to do that. Some excerpts follow:
    •Here the great minds clump like Southern biscuits. / The friction of their dialog heats the air like an oven, / and certainty is due to rise any minute, (The Committee Meets in the Capitol)
    •You can't buy snow tires here, so when the ice comes / it shuts us all down like weak batteries; (Southern Blizzards)
    •brief moments of blurred dis-existence / like night bats around a street lamp plunging in and out of creation, (The Fair)
    •[we]... launched into the flat, suggestive allegory of the road. / There was no Jack Kerouac in it-- / only an immense desire to chew a little on the world's flowers. (The Summer of Our Discontent)
    •I don't know when the sun shines / if it's day-time or just my own desire for day. / In the jostling milieu of colors, / every answer is here but that. (The Better Road Beside)
    Unlike poets of the indeterminate variety, Hoyt risks his reputation on literary efficacy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDon A. Hoyt
    Release dateJan 2, 2014
    ISBN9781311594969
    Tribal Magic
    Author

    Don A. Hoyt

    Don A. Hoyt grew up in New Orleans in a single parent home, residing mostly in public housing projects. He dropped out of high school to serve 4 years in the US Navy and later went on to earn a B.A. in English (1973) and two Master's degrees: Education (1977) and Public Adminisrtration (2004).Hoyt's career in education (Wossman HS, Grambling State University, Louisiana Delta Community College, and Downsville Charter School Board) spanned 17 years. His career in Public Administration (local agency Assistant Director, city Planning and Development Director, County Administrator, and City Manager) spanned 24 years. While working at GSU, he managed a consulting business, Hired Hand Outsourcing, which served municipal clients across Louisiana to adopt Comprehensive Plans and development ordinances. Hoyt officially retired in 2013 from his position as the City Manager (Chief Administrative Officer) of the City of Anniston, Alabama, population 25,000; however, since 2016 he has taught one or two Composition classes at LDCC.Over the years Hoyt has published numerous poems, short stories, and literary essays across the country. The following 40 academic presses have published Hoyt's works of fiction, poetry, and/or literary commentary.Providence College, Providence, RINorthern Illinois University, Chicago, ILCalifornia State University Northridge, Northridge, ILUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, ALRoger Williams College, Bristol, RIEastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KYAngelo State University, San Angelo, TXUniversity of Mississippi (Ole Miss), University, MSDeKalb College, Clarkston, GAUniversity of Iowa, Iowa City, IOUniversity of Central Florida, Orlando, FLUniversity of Houston, Houston, TXSalem State College, Salem, MALenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NCPiedmont College, Demorest, GANortheast Louisiana University, Monroe, LABerea College, Richmond, KYKansas State University, Manhattan, KSIdaho State University, Pocatello, IDNichols State University, Thibodaux, LALouisiana State University at Eunice, Eunice, LACalifornia State University at Long BeachWright State University, Dayton, OHUniversity of North Dakota, Grand Forks, NDCalifornia State University, San BernardinoUniversity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PACollege of the Mainland, Texas City, TXStephen F. Austin University, Nacogdoches, TXSan Jose State University, San Jose, CARoanoke College, Salem, VASierra Nevada College, Incline Village, NVPikeville College, Pikeville, KYCleveland State University, Cleveland, OHUniversity of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WIUniversity of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WISchoolcraft College, Livonia, MIGrambling State University, Grambling, LAKent University, Canterbury, Kent, UKFranklin College, Lugano, Switzerland

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      Book preview

      Tribal Magic - Don A. Hoyt

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Part I

      Visiting the Gulf

      Mother's Chore

      Southern Blizzards

      The Fair

      The Sports of Old People

      The Committee Meets in the Capitol

      Sunday Morning Walk

      The Sport of Leaping

      Christmas on the Levees

      Roadside Fatality

      Old Songs in the Airport

      Atticesque

      Saint Joseph's Old Folks- Tulips

      Part II

      My Beginnings

      Dry Places

      Saint Thomas Project

      Never Reaching Four

      Stealing Arrows

      Race Riot Unattended: Spring 1961

      On the Renshaw at Sea

      Cycles Delivering

      The Summer of Our Discontent

      Never Again Will I Challenge the Sun

      Letter

      Impressions of Childhood

      Part III

      Street Furniture

      Watermelon Patch Crusade

      On Mount Sano in the Quiet Above Huntsville

      Morning on the Farm

      Christmas Tree Farm

      The Catfish Pond

      The Better Road Beside

      The Baffled Naturalist

      The Public Works Crew Working Overtime

      When I Touched You

      On Black Bayou with My Friends

      Innocent Action

      Riding the Rails

      Gravestones in the Woods

      BIO Notes

      PART I

      Whatever we come on that is great, beautiful, significant, cannot be recollected. It must from the first be evolved from within us....

      Goethe, 1823

      Our thought, incessantly deciding among many things of a kind, which ones for it shall be realities....

      William James, 1890

      Visiting the Gulf

      The day I arrived, the Gulf grumbled at me.

      A cold, white belly slid over the beach crushing everything.

      I like to remember it differently, more personal:

      the folding chair stubbornly gripping the sand

      when the rain drove me inside,

      the hours before dawn waiting for excitement,

      hearing the distant highway hiss

      like a tongue sliding along adhesive

      bearing news of some theatrical mastication

      I rejected for its bending words like mud flaps as it went.

      A distant harbor reflected the white sky in pieces;

      there were those who knew the real winter there.

      Their boats eased back and forth between a few well known places,

      the salt ending somewhere

      and fresh water surging south like a misguided pioneer.

      On cold mornings their wives would make a shrimper's brew,

      black like the Gulf and salty.

      Whispering harsh truisms about red skies and dead pelicans,

      they grew prouder as the days warmed,

      heaved-ho toward some of their well known places,

      breathed each new day cursing with life.

      Like derelicts emerging from a cardboard flats,

      on the morning of the second day birds materialized

      asking for names, revering the fused congruity around,

      colorful warts on the bristling fingers hidden

      among the sprightly green botanical sequins of the trees.

      Anglers, like fish corks, bobbed loosely on the waves,

      courageous amateurs in the lull between storms.

      So I try very hard to remember the Gulf shore.

      Where else can I reshape myself like the sand,

      better equip myself for sucking shrimp from the brine

      like the vicious trawlers renewed each season,

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