James A. Autry

This book is rather narrowly _targeted to higher level corporate managers. The general principles can be adapted for other situations, but Autry doesn't make any real attempt to stretch in that way.

This is 47 short chapters. Each chapter starts with an excerpt from the Tao Te Ching in Stephen Mitchell's translation. After a while I started keeping Ursula Le Guin's translation alongside and reading her version too! Autry then comments in two or three pages how the principles can be used by a manager.

I'm pretty much a Taoist novice and an using this book as an entry point. I don't doubt that this book barely skims the surface of Lao Tzu's vision. The books doesn't really claim to do more. Seems to me perfectly valid for a person to use and share whatever limited understanding they might have. I'm rather fascinated by the notion of colonization ... how e.g. an American might claim to be more of an expert in Lao Tzu's thinking than someone who grew up in Chinese culture. But that's not what's happening here. I see nothing wrong with Americans cooking and enjoying spaghetti, as long as they don't claim that it is more authentic than an Italian's spaghetti!

This is probably more an issue with Mitchell's translation, which seems to take a lot of license and I gather presents itself as more a translation than a kind of reformulation type of interpretation. But the present book seems to be Autry's book. It uses the Mitchell "translation", but doesn't get caught up in arguing that it has captured Lao Tzu's true meaning.… (more)

If it can be understood, it is not poetry — not real poetry. That, at least, seems to be a critical standard expressed by Mark Strand, representing many contemporary poets in the Academic Establishment of today. In his clever lecture, “Poetry in the World,” he says, for instance,

“Oh, of course, there are poems—and many are being written today—that present the reader with a slice of life . . . . Such poems say what they mean right away. And the poets who write that sort of poem—what might be called the metonymic poem—are usually talking about their own experiences. What happens when you read such poems is that they put you back in the world you know. . . . When they are read in front of an audience they often elicit a lot of head-nodding. They . . . imply that here is someone else who had an experience like yours.”

Such plain-spoken, straight-forward, accessible poems, Strand dismisses: “I must admit I am not a fan of such poems.” Later, he is even more explicit in his demand for obliqueness, for what is ultimately incomprehensible:

“. . . people's expectations are misdirected when all they want is to understand a poem. It is one of the exasperating things about the way poetry is taught. It is assumed that an understanding of the poem is the same as the experience of the poem. Often the experience of a poem—a good poem—will elude understanding.”

So there you have contemporary poetry. If it is accessible, it likely is not true to experience. If it is a true experience, it will probably elude understanding. And, of course, that is precisely why contemporary poetry has, for the most part, lost its appeal to the common reader. There is this automatic division between poetry for the Academe and poetry for the Populace, and never the twain shall meet.

And yet . . . .

And yet, some poetry that satisfies me does so precisely because it helps me recapture significant personal experiences. Reading it, I recall a time and place, a situation or event that moved me, or puzzled me, or troubled me, one that I would not willingly forget. Or it helps me apprehend — indirectly, empathetically, imaginatively — the “experience” of someone else: another time and place, a situation or event beyond my personal experience. The poem itself becomes an experience that broadens my perspective, deepens my awareness, sharpens the intensity of my response. Hence, some poems satisfy me precisely because they put me back in a world I know, or once knew. When I hear them read aloud, they are likely to provoke some head-nodding on my part. They show me that someone else has had an experience similar to mine. I am grateful for such poems. I hope that some of the poems I have written may one day provide the same satisfaction to ones I care about.

And that brings me to Nights under a Tin Roof by James A. Autry (Yoknapatawpha Press, c1983). Autry was a Mississippi farm boy who grew up to become editor of a well-known magazine and eventually a general manager for a national publishing corporation. But, like me, he grew up in the country, where he often was lulled to sleep by the sound of rain on a tin roof. There were good times and bad times for boys like us; remembering our experiences may be pleasant, or poignant, or even sorrowful. Sharing such memories can be a source of great satisfaction.

Take, for example, poems with titles like “Fox Hunt,” “The Store,” “The Outhouse,” “Revival Meeting” (which, in my neighborhood would have been called “the big meetin’"), “All Day Singing with Dinner on the Grounds,” “Gravedigger,” and the like.

The one I have read most often is “Genealogy.” (Sorry I cannot reproduce the spacing and italics of the original in LT.) It begins:

You are
in these hills
who you were and who you will become
and not just who you are

She was a McKinstry
and his mother was a Smith

And the listeners nod
at what the combination will produce
those generations to come
of thievery or honesty
of heathens or Christians
of slovenly men or working

’Course her mother was a Sprayberry . . .

And his daddy’s mother was a McIlhenney

For you see, where I grew up it would have been said, “Well, ya know, his daddy’s folks didn’t come from around here, but his mamma was a Clift, her mamma was a Davis, her mamma’s mamma had been a Harris, but her daddy’s mamma was a West.” And that made everything all right -- maybe. It also gave me a bit of a burden to bear: a reputation to live up to -- and just the slight possibility that I would become a peculiar old bachelor before I married a younger woman in my middle years, or a widower who would take a second wife and a drink before noon — or a respectable husband who just might take a mistress in his later years. But, of course, the Clift line would be tempered by the Davises and Harrises and the Wests. So, all in all . . . . Of course, all these things were spoken quietly, not to be overheard by “young pitchers with big ears.”

But Autry has seen another way to read character in names:

In other times and other places
there are new families and new names

He’s ex P&G
out of Benton and Bowles
and was brand management with Colgate

And listeners sip Dewar’s and soda or puff New True Lights
and know how people will do things
they are expected to do

Of course, in my case, I had a doctorate from Iowa with Bob Carlsen and a master’s in English from North Carolina, but one of my department chairs was from Harvard and and had not gotten tenure at Wisconsin, and another came from Arkansas by way of Texas Tech. Other colleagues were from Notre Dame and Boston U and the U of Texas. The poet-in-residence studied with Yvor Winters at Stanford, as did Thom Gunn, Donald Hall, N. Scott Momaday, Robert Pinsky, and Robert Hass. Well, all of that spoke volumes in that culture -- like being a Clift or a McIlhenny.

So, you see, “Genealogy,” put me back in my own time and place. You can probably see me nodding my head. That’s one of the things poetry can do for us.

This particular book, by Autry, is enhanced with black-and-white photographs from that earlier era, a bit grainy and sometimes unfocused, photographs of hog killing and sorghum making, a woman showing off her canning cupboard, men playing checkers at a service station, a country church with two front doors (one for each aisle), and a baptizing in a river. They do not illustrate the poems, but are a visual counterpart of the poem as "slice of life."

The first real poem I ever wrote (ironically, it was during a time of great national mourning) was called “Blackberry Picking.” In Autry’s “Seasons Came with Food,” he joins me in that kind of time and place:

There came the day when
we soaked rags in coal oil
and tied them on our wrists and ankles

Them chiggers love blackberry bushes
better ’n I love blackberries

And we’d fill our one gallon buckets
with the dark berries staining our hands
and chiggers getting past the coal oil
with the wasps nests and the yellow jackets
and always the snakes

Copperheads love to lie up
in the shade of those blackberries
so make plenty of noise chirren

Such poems do, indeed, say what they mean right away. And readers understand the poem. Yes, the poet is writing about his own experience. Once again, one hears rain falling on a tin roof:

When rain plays different notes
high near the peak and low in the middle
is best
When the thunder is far off down the Tippah bottom
and the wind is settled to breezes

I am a fan of such poems.… (more)