The Hollow Log Lounge : poems / by R.T. Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, R. T.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Illinois poetry series

Language:

English

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

68 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2003]

Summary:

"This is no fairy tale. /It's all fantastic and bizarre and true. It's my life, / a raspy song that sounds better if you sing along." The men and women who live and work near Opelika, Alabama, gather at the Hollow Log Lounge. There, under the watchful eye of the stuffed fox behind the bar, they unload their gripes and worries, tell their stories, argue, joke, commune, complain, and confess. In this collection of poems, R. T. Smith paints a vividly imagined portrait of the community in this small-town bar, capturing the chorus of the patrons' voices echoing off the knotted wood-paneled walls. Smith's stand-in, Sam Buckhannon, scribbles stories heard and overheard as tongues loosened by liquor spin out monologues in which southern idiom and vernacular seem perfectly at home within the constraints of measured verse.

Contents:

One man's sanctuary in Opelika, Alabama

Confession in a booth at the Hollow Log Lounge

A local doc, over rocky lunchtime bourbon, speaks of barter and hopeful home remedies

Charlene Sperry on safe beauty

Flat-footing on bluegrass night : Dorsey Hostetter explains it all to a stranger

He gets nostalgic in the Hollow Log Lounge just before Friday night's last call

Pick it, squirrel : Steven Gresham sees the light

Theology in the Hollow Log

Wade Seego believes Soylent Green is people

A cosmological discovery in the Hollow Log Lounge

Tull Jackson's slow confession

In horsehide shoes, Fleur Hobbs eats cheese, drinks Irish beer, and laments the nature of her one arrest

Break time : Herman Wiggins just about says it all to a fledgling who hopes swing music turns the local girls to carnal dreams

Getting cleared : the cosmetologist recounts her recent high-noon ordeal

Cadmon Dabney from Whitby Corners on how he made his song

Dew Stuart's breakthrough on the jew's harp

Oxford Stroud recollects fishing with electricity

The Phyllis

After one straight Jack too many, the salesman waxes wild

Politics and vodka in the Hollow Log Lounge

Cowgirl

Zydeco Washboard, the confession of Johnny Smooth

A putative country star rebukes his exit escort

Twang chic : Sam Buckhannon explores the latest fashion

Country music

One-eye remembers Silver Queen

James Lee Bucky declines the offer

Leaving the Kmart 4-for-$1 photo portrait booth, Junior Martin flirts with madness beyond the Bluelight Special and rumors of joy

Miller

He has seen more than he bargained for

Working up a thirst in the Hollow Log Lounge

March, and Mae Fields tells the most recent miracle she sort of saw

Goatsucker : Dillard Ramsey admits to his suspicions

Jane Lagrone rejects a tract en route to happy hour

Sheriff Matt Whitlock confesses to a lesson in Zen after Hours

The end : Sam Buckhannon's lament as told to Pattie Holcey.

ISBN:

0252028627

0252071379

OCLC:

51223655