Barrier Island Suite : Poems [1 ed.] 9781680030662, 9781680030655

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BARRIER ISLAND

SUITE

Poemsinspiredby the life and art of WalterInglisAnderson

Barrier Island Suite

  for Walter Inglis Anderson

 

 

Barrier Island Suite Poems inspired by   The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson     Kendall Dunkelberg

Copyright @ 2016 by Kendall Dunkelberg All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America FIRST EDITION Requests for permission to acknowledge material from the work should be sent to: Permissions Texas Review Press English Department Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX 77341-2146 Poems from this collection first appeared in the following journals: The Cape Rock: “Thorns.” China Grove: “Horn Island,” “Sand Mountain,” and “The Islander.” Poetry South: “Undulant Fever,” “Asylum Roads,” “Ocean Springs,” “North        Key,” “Birdfall,” “Silent Spring,” “Mississippi Sound,” and “Betsy.” Tar River Poetry: “Chivaree.” The Texas Review: “Great Spirit Road,” “Nullah,” “The Road to Shu,” and “The        Cottage.” Valley Voices: “The Little Room,” “Father of Waters,” “Nature Morte,”        “Chandeleur” and “Dog Keys Pass.” Text excerpts from the Horn Island logs and some of the artwork by Walter Inglis Anderson are modified and reproduced from The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson, Revised Edition, edited, with an Introduction, by Redding S. Sugg, Jr., (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), by permission of the Walter I. Anderson Estate. Other artwork used by permission of the Walter I. Anderson Estate from the collections of the Walter Anderson Museum and Realizations Gallery in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dunkelberg, Kendall, author. Title: Barrier island suite / Kendall Dunkelberg. Description: Huntsville, Texas : Texas Review Press, [2016] Identifiers: LCCN 2015047096 (print) | LCCN 2015050425 (ebook) | ISBN    9781680030655 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781680030662 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Anderson, Walter Inglis, 1903-1965--Poetry. | Barrier    islands--Mississippi--Poetry. | Barrier island    ecology--Mississippi--Poetry. | Gulf Coast (Miss.)--Poetry. Classification: LCC PS3604.U545 B37 2016 (print) | LCC PS3604.U545 (ebook) |    DDC 811/.6--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047096

Acknowledgements

  These poems are inspired by the life, art, and writings of Walter Inglis Anderson, who spent much of his adult life exploring the barrier islands of Mississippi and Louisiana, sketching and painting their flora and fauna, and chronicling his adventures in numerous logs. In these poems, I have attempted to engage in a conversation with Walter Anderson by blending his language with the language and form of the poems. From the beginning, I annotated the poems to acknowledge my debt to Walter Anderson’s imagery and vivid language from the logs, along with my other sources. These annotations appear at the end of this volume for those who wish to follow that conversation or fill in some of the context of the poems.   Many thanks are due the Mississippi Arts Commission for their support of artist residencies at Hambidge Center and Artcroft, where the early poems were composed and revised, as well as to Mississippi University for Women for the sabbatical that made this initial work possible.   Special thanks to the family of Walter Anderson for their friendship and cooperation and for allowing reproductions of Anderson’s work to accompany these poems and to Christopher Mauer, whose careful reading informed my revisions. Special thanks as well as to Paul Ruffin, for the faith he has placed in this book and for all his support through the years, and to my colleagues at Mississippi University for Women for their support, especially Bridget Smith Pieschel, Tom and Emma Richardson, and Ralph and Ginger Hitt.   Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family: my mother Leone Dunkelberg, my mother-in-law Betty Whitehead, my wife Kim Whitehead, and my son Aidan Dunkelberg. Without your love and support, none of this would be possible. v

Table of Contents I: Prelude 1 2 3 5 6



II: Courante 10 11 13



III: Water Music

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

IV: Intermezzi 26 27 28



vi

32 33 35 36 37 38 39 40



VI: Claire de Lune 44 46 47





49 60 61

vii

I Prelude

Barrier Island Suite~1

Sand Mountain Impermanence, flux the principle of wu wei. Water flows downhill, yielding to stones in its path. Stone in turn gives of itself. The sharp hooves of deer, roots of tree and trillium, moss, lichen, and grass chip at the solid surface. Rain and ice wash it away. Sharp fragments of stone suspended in rivulets, brooks, streams, and rivers, gradually lose their edges, tumbled until they are round. Though responsive, water is more powerful than the hardest stone. The great Tennessee River carries mountains to the sea. Grains of silt and sand, once on Appalachian heights, now are shaped by waves, tossed into new formations, island peaks on the Gulf floor.

2~Dunkelberg

Mississippi Sound When skies above had no name tiamat mixed with apsu salt water and fresh to form a womb for the gods of Sumeria. Here the Biloxi, the Pearl and the Pascagoula mix their fresh waters with the salt of the sound behind barrier islands. The lesser gods are minnows mullet, octopus, and shrimp, while the greater gods are the hammerhead, flounder, turtle, and porpoise. The greater gods of the air, the terns, kingfishers, herons pelicans, ospreys, and cormorants, feed on the small gods of the sea. When Zephyr begins to win her war with cold Boreas, the small gods of air, the migrating songbirds may return to the isles. Life thrives in the sound, guarded by the islands’ dunes and trees from the harshest winds and strongest seas, nurtured by the land’s sweet waters.

Barrier Island Suite~3

Sea Oats An island of dunes, border of sand and water; alive with the wind, land defies definition, fluid as salt in the waves. Only the sea oats restrain the power of wind, resist the allure of waves that gently lap or storm ashore on hurricanes. Tender roots reach down into this river of sand like delicate hands, each finger clutching a grain, holding on against the flow. Above, the stems wave, slowing the force of the wind, mimicking water. In flux the sea oats hold fast, solid and liquid at once. Terns and heron nest in the refuge grass provides. Turtles bury eggs, so the sand will come to life when hatchlings head for the sea. Behind the island, calmer waters form the sound, where fish and shrimp teem. Ample food for waterfowl completes the cycle of life.

4~Dunkelberg

  More slender than reed, stronger than the elements, the sea oats harbor a universe with their lives, sanity against the void.   Crush or pull them up; the barrier disappears. With no more restraint, the island returns to sea. Again wind and water reign.

Barrier Island Suite~5

Settlement The first to arrive were Native Americans, as evidenced by pottery shards and arrowheads still found among the dunes. Yet their presence was limited to seasonal hunting and fishing; no permanent settlement has been found on the islands. Spanish explorers may have landed, anno 1528, when Cabeza de Vaca sought shelter from a storm. Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville named the islands: Ship for its shape, Cat for raccoons, Horn for a lost powder horn. A copse of trees gave a name to Pettit Bois. The Dauphin swims at the mouth of Mobile Bay; Deer and Round graze the              shore. Ship became a port for the French, then a fort in the Civil War and again in World War II, till split in two by a storm. Horn island remained uninhabited until 1845, when the Waters family arrived to raise pigs and cattle. In World War II the army built barracks here, poured creosote in ponds to fight mosquitos, and poisoned the fish and crabs. Here came the artist, set up his tent, and chased off hunters, frog jiggers, fishermen, and families on Sunday outings.

6~Dunkelberg

Isle of Caprice In the salt Gulf waves, a pipe gushes fresh water where a madman drinks. But in the Roaring Twenties men built a casino there. Bootleg rum flowed free off the Mississippi Coast. jazz played on the waves. They pulled up native sea oats to plant Japanese gardens. Chinese tapestries were hung in gold pagodas, where flappers tangoed. September brought hurricanes That battered barrier islands, tore up cabanas, scattered jade tree and phoenix, swept away the sands. The sea reclaimed the island, buried roulette wheels and dreams. All that is left is a pipe like a periscope jutting from the waves,

Barrier Island Suite~7

  where lone Walter Anderson drinks clear artesian water.   The well that was dug, still satisfies the thirst of the man in his skiff.

 

II Courante

10~Dunkelberg

Undulant Fever Weeks after the trek through the bayou hunting wild iris, the fever comes on the slow legs of the sea turtle with the dank odor of sludge from a submerged sandbar, cold sweats, winter nights when spring should turn to summer. The seasons are all a jumble, ice gives way to the fires of the summer, bronzed skin or a fever blush with chills. Lethargy vacillates into a manic dance, Mississippi kites flashing their tails in a warm, stiff breeze. Diving into the bay, Walter becomes a crab, waving a claw to the bulrushes on shore, scuttling along with bottom feeders, swimming for miles to be retrieved, nearly catatonic from the cold. The fire in the sun or wild iris in bloom, scattered by a storm, washed away to be discovered years later, iris bulbs and turtle eggs buried in the same clumps of dune grass that shelter the nests of shore birds. No such rest for Walter, caught in the throes of this fire, one moment burning with life and passion, the next cold, impotent, longing to drown in the waves or leap from a bridge, to swim, to fly, to die.

Barrier Island Suite~11

Asylum Roads The road to the asylum is cold and hard, paved with rigid stones and broken glass, smothered in deep vegetable silences, punctuated with inarticulate snarls, bared fangs, and sharpened claws. In Baltimore, Phipps Clinic’s four walls cage in freedom. Doctors pry open silences with ice baths and chemical shock, hydrotherapy and Metrasol, but the four edges of his sketch pad open onto another world. The road home is long and silent. Once there he becomes a wanderer in the wilderness of night, the paint in his brushes no longer flows, and his pad remains deaf and dumb. The road to the bedroom rolls past thistles, through swamps and over beds of coals to the room of someone’s child, but whose? Cold hands at the throat, cold steel glare. The road to Shepard Pratt is swift as the axe flashing threats in the rearview mirror. The road ahead offers unfamiliar doctors, medications, and a library of voyages that are never enough, so he upends a bookcase, traps his orderly and disappears down the winter road into a snowstorm, walking for months on bleeding feet, in a heavy coat he got from a general’s black maid, sustained by food begged at the doors of the poorest of the poor.

Unbathed, wild and hairy, he returns in spring, hiding in the barn, pilfering from the pantry, until his sister digs him up from under blankets like a dried and bitter root. The only record of his travels, scribbled on paper sacks, stuffed in pockets like a torn up treasure map.   The night roads of home wind through a labyrinth of dream and desire, through swamp sludge and ash of forest fires, past fields of jealousy, back to the bedroom where he throws the baby out with the butcher knife.   The road to Whitfield is short and swift on willing wheels with the sedated patient slumped in back, as wife and doctor drive to four grim walls that still hem him in. Walls he decorates with birds of flight, climbing sheets out the window to escape.   Yet the return road is slower, calmer, more tired, taken in numb months, living first with his mother in a Jackson apartment, facing checkups, recuperation, and a gradual revival of painting, as he prepares for home.   Only on the sea road is he free. The four edges of his sail blow to the four corners of his dream. The island looms ahead, an asylum without walls, without doctors or diagnoses, a living sanctuary where the artist reunites with his world.

Barrier Island Suite~13

Nullah Once, left behind in the house, the nurse brings the baby, a foreign creature, his unacknowledged offspring, wailing and delirious with fever, an animal in need. The road to the doctor in New Orleans is driven, mad and alone, fearing the worst, carrying the boy child to hospital, to a world of instruments and rooms, a world of sterile walls, diagnoses, and operations. He hesitates, then drives off with the boy to cool down in the healing waters of a marsh, submerged in the primal mud of bog and swamp, where little minnows nibble at nipples and toes and diaphanous dragonflies alight on the nose. Here, the serpent is no more an enemy than the little green heron, eyeing them from a distance. Here, the artist is at one with creation for an afternoon, bathed in gentle sunlight as the genie of the nullah visits father and son.

 

,.

-----

r

III Water Music

16~Dunkelberg

Dog Keys Pass Apollo pedals his blue bicycle over the deep. Dolphins leap through wheels, casting rainbow nets, as water droplets catch sun. Sirius stands guard over the dark, troubled sea. Isis on her throne controls the ebb and the flood churning the relentless waves. Night and day a man in a green skiff pulls the oars between the Ship and the Horn. Don Quixote rides his shield tilting the wind with his sail. Will he make landfall or will the waves swamp his ship and does it matter, when bailing bilge is wisdom and crossing, the only truth? Beneath him, mullet, overhead, the pelican, he skims over waves like a modern Icarus wax wings melting in the sun.

Barrier Island Suite~17

Chandeleur When Venus rises over the Chandeleur light, she calms the north wind. Both morning and evening star bless the sailor on the sea, as at Candlemas the lights of the church are blessed, virgin purified, babe brought to meet Simeon and Anna in the temple. Walter in his boat is the babe in swaddling clothes held in ancient hands. As he passes this outpost his journey is sanctified. He may sail over the wine-dark sea to North Key where he will witness a field of yellow cosmos in front of an azure sky Yet he will return for water from the keeper or on his way home.

18~Dunkelberg

North Key At the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Gulf, islands formed, remnants of the delta mud from Mid-America. Oysters and mussels made their beds in the rich silt. The waves brought in shells forming beaches and a ridge that held the high tide at bay. The low islands soon teemed with life: pelicans, terns, gulls, man-o’-war birds, white egrets, oystercatchers herons, geese, and cormorants. All found nesting grounds in bulrushes and mangroves. All found good fishing on the oyster banks or in shallow inlets and lagoons.

Barrier Island Suite~19

The Magic Hour Mangroves full of life shoot up tubers from the earth, tall as cypress knees. Between them young fiddler crabs emerge from their holes to dance. Males wave their big claw in unison, beckoning to shy females with a spiral wave of welcome, a ritual to the sun. Their purple shadows flirt with the mangrove branches Black man-o’-war birds in formation overhead fly before the golden orb. In the magic hour before sunset the whole world dances together the mangrove sways with the crab. Waves, sand, grass, and clouds join in. Even the artist waves his long torso and arms his feet planted firm in the mud of the bayou, his hair flying in the wind.

20~Dunkelberg

Horn Island The eye of the wind opens an azure passage to the island, on or hovering just above the waves on the horizon. Clouds form a ladder with one end on the island where only heaven’s creatures may tread, yet Fortune grants entrance to the artist. There he seeks refuge from the dominant shore mode: the life of an ass that is saddled and ready to be driven or ridden. There he accepts all that Fortune has to offer, whether halcyon skies or a purple-black squall that portends a coming storm. He finds wandering trees, twisted and bent by the wind, one side stunted, while the other grows like a vine, wonderfully strange. On white sand beaches he sees a blue crab with stars in a midnight sky etched on its shell by a hand that is greater than his own.

Barrier Island Suite~21

Island in the Stream What appears solid is fluid, moving slower than the eye perceives. So are the islands swept west by the strong prevailing tides. Bearing this in mind, Horn Island becomes the back of a great white whale, the artist becomes Ahab locked in an eternal quest. It is not the hunt that compels him to return. It is the desire to confront the inhuman, to unite man with the world. No force of nature too strong to drive him away. No bond of culture strong enough to bind him or soft enough to lure him home. Riding through the gulf on the back of his island the artist creates his own small community of blackbirds, grackles, and rats.

22~Dunkelberg

Chivaree He comes here to flee madness and obligations on shore yet the human world can never completely be lost or left behind. The military high road, devoid of vegetation, makes a good pathway when he is not progressing through swamps and lagoons. Rabbit Springs provides water from a well the army dug. It’s his only source until he sinks an old tin can into the sand. Even the mosquitoes are easier to bear with Flit and the biting ants can be driven far away with its toxic spray. He watches ships and barges pass daily through the channel. A banana boat loses its cargo and feeds the island for weeks.

Barrier Island Suite~23

In the night, drunken hunters come to give a chivaree, pounding on his boat as a reminder of wife and children at home.

 

IV Intermezzi

26~Dunkelberg

The Cottage Here, the wheel of work, decorating Shearwater pots, carving intricate designs, spirals, fish, fowl, suns, and moons, forming grooves in the soft clay where the darker glaze will pool. Here, the production of ten pots per week will earn his keep, so he works at a fevered pitch night and day to bank enough excess production to fuel another voyage to the island. Here, art turns utilitarian: widgets and woodblocks, military surplus linoleum mass producing prints that convey the artist’s vision to the common folk. Here, the kabuki dance in the night, mad feet pounding the floor in Dionysian trance, fed by fire and the fermentation of the vine. Here, the eagle’s nest, a platform built high in a pine spar, a refuge always looking out to sea: a place of light, a place of solitude, a place of ecstasy. Here, the locked door and threats hurled at intruders or the door thrown open wide to excited children hanging on tales of his adventures at sea. Here, the wheel turns ever faster. Here, the ties of the shore wrestle with the lure of the sea until he packs provisions in gunny sacks and sets sail.

Barrier Island Suite~27

Ocean Springs A wall is not a wall if it contains a tree, if it is covered in trees, their branches arching over every image, an intricate interconnected border with their roots always reaching lower to groundwater. A wall is not a wall when the blue black panther of night prowls beside the window, when the sun and the rose glow in its corners, and the alligator day crawls on slow steady legs. A wall is not a wall when it comes to life. On these walls, the artist performs his social role, brings the community his gift, recounts the tale of the tribe, their history, their labors, the hunt through the forest for the chesty deer, their slaughter, their sacrifice and thanksgiving. These walls celebrate the harvest of the sea by both the native and the modern peoples with the same rhythms: the same arc of net, the same washing and cooking round the hearth, the same intertwining of nature and culture. These walls are not walls once they open onto the world to merge the artist’s vision with the landscape outside, blending past, present, and the promise of a future, where walls will be windows into the soul and onto the world.

28~Dunkelberg

The Road to Shu The road to Shu is long, first by bicycle to New Orleans, then by plane to San Francisco, Honolulu, Japan, and finally Hong Kong, where he embarks without a map through a wild foreign country, following the Yangtze past revolutions and water buffalo, asking for directions with signs and broken English, and depending on the kindness of strangers. The road to Shu is heaven’s road. His fellow travelers, peasants, priests, and former soldiers who gather round to marvel at the contents of his pack, his log books, his paints, and foreign currency. On heaven’s road the needy must only hold out his palms like a bowl to receive meager alms from those no richer than he, a scoop of rice, some foreign food he can’t identify, as heaven’s yellow river flows behind him to the sea. The road to Shu is hard, made of steep trails and sky ladders through tall mountain passes teaming with wild tigers, snakes, and thieves who steal his identity, his money, his logs and sketches. Though the golden mountains of Tibet loom ahead, he must return on foot, retracing weary steps downriver, to cable home for funds and fly back across the ocean, arriving by bike the way he left, but with one flat tire, in his hands, his reconstructed log.

 

V The Rite of Spring

32~Dunkelberg

Natural Law Is it enough to call man a lunatic or a fool? Yet you can not say that he is dead, when he can see, hear, touch, and taste. Believing the world is ruled by natural law, he says, “of course,” before his senses come to his aid with wonder and surprise. As a result, the man dies. His neighbors and friends murmur with the wind, “of course.” Love of bird that might bring life flies off on that wind. A bird starts up, and in that fraction of a second, man and the bird are real. He is the only man; it is the only bird. Every feather, every mark Every part of the pattern is real. He exists. He’s nearly as wonderful as the thing he sees.

Barrier Island Suite~33

Nature morte Familiar blackbirds gather for his daily rice, welcome his return, their red epaulets flashing in the pages of his logs. Rescuer of crabs, wounded birds, and terrapin, he will draw or paint everything he finds, living or dead, cast up on the sand. Fleet of hand and foot he snares birds, snakes, and lizards in an old felt hat, brings them back to be models holds them captive in his tent. He feeds them his rice and sardines or nets minnows to force feed them live. After days of servitude he sets his prisoners free. Some escape his grasp. Some survive to be released. Most are less lucky. Their wounds are too severe or they starve on human rations.

34~Dunkelberg

The high dune where he buries his first bird, Simy, a young, injured scaup,   becomes a necropolis for his unfortunate pets.   Before burial each is honored with a sketch, a still life of death.

Barrier Island Suite~35

Birdfall When April’s sweet breeze becomes a cold nor’wester, migrating thrashers, waxwings, grosbeaks, and buntings can be caught in nets of wind. Worn out from their trek across the Gulf, they tumble through the air in search of safe harbor, a refuge from the unrelenting wind. By hundreds they land using their last ounce of strength to reach the island. Some make the dunes and survive. Others founder in the waves. In the sea, the crabs will bury their carcasses or they will be cast ashore like wet handkerchiefs that the artist finds and draws. On land, they regroup in small flocks, adorning shrub and tree with flashes of color. Together they avoid the hungry falcon. Their main goal, find food, refuel for their next journey across the wide sound. They wait for the wind to shift, sing a symphony to life.

36~Dunkelberg

Thorns In paradise, there are thorns the thistle, the cactus spine, the sharp oyster shell slice the foot and cut the arm, draw the artist’s blood. .

Mosquitos and biting gnats drive the artist from the shore to sleep in his boat serenaded by the stars rocked by gentle waves. By day the holy sun burns, forcing him onto the shore in search of refuge in the shade of the mangrove or his umbrella. The bitter northwest wind blows, storm rages around his tent, blowing in sand but blowing mosquitos away, bringing some respite. Even in thistles he sees, between beautiful blossoms, ruby hummingbirds. With beaks as sharp as the thorns, they harvest nectar.

Barrier Island Suite~37

Silent Spring The life that once filled North Key is gone. Mother pelicans no longer build nests, no longer lay three large white eggs, no longer brood. There are no feeding orgies where the infant pelicans stick their heads into their mother’s throats so far they nearly can’t get out. Young males no longer extend their huge wings in the storm wind longing for first flight some carried aloft, only to settle again. The shells of their eggs grew thin. Their young didn’t hatch, victims of pesticides like DDT in the water and the fish they ate. What silence, where once there was such a hissing and squawking, each time a mother would appear with a throat full of fish for her young.

38~Dunkelberg

Pots of Gold He passed through the wood of terrible flies and came out onto white hills. There he searched for his fortune in the flotsam and jetsam. He might find a book, a boat laid out in pieces, or a green bottle encrusted with barnacles filled with a heady liquor. Returning home at sunset, he saw a rainbow behind him, one end on Round Island, the other where he once dug up a pot. The pot was empty. Surely it must have held gold once upon a time. Who could have taken it first? Who robbed him of his treasure? Was it the ghost crab, whose legs, he finds are covered in fine golden hairs? Or was it the goldenrod, blooming profusely this year? As the yellow moon rises behind a blood red cloud, he stoops to draw the treasures he’s discovered more precious than any gold.

Barrier Island Suite~39

The Islander Painting his subject, Wen Yü K’o becomes bamboo. Han Kan turns to horse. Walter merges with island, follows pig tunnels through brush. In flotsam shoes, he walks on water moccasins and on copperheads. Not immune to their venom he suffers fevered visions. He’s the young heron seen climbing a dead pine spar with feet, wings, and bill, stretching out to mount a cloud and take the heavens by storm. He’s the hurricane whose strong winds scatter his camp, whose rain soaks notebooks, watercolors returning to the water whence they came. Waves lash the island, as Walter, lashed to a pine like Odysseus bound to the mast of his ship, listens to the sirens’ call.

40~Dunkelberg

Betsy On his last trips he began to see pelicans again first a pair, then three, then six, and then seventeen flying together. No wonder he felt so blessed, as if time had turned back to when the world was one. Even the tiny crabs used his footprints for beds. Everywhere, he found full nests. Blackbird families squabbled in front of his nose, the young demanding their food, father giving in. Then came the awful sunrise, vermillion against turquoise, the black spirit bird hovering before the clouds, sounding a warning. The noble forms of the waves were replaced by the storm surge. In the dark of night, he moved camp through flooded trees to the highest dunes. In the morning, he surveyed what remained of his domain. The beach was built up, but his camp was gone, simply sliced off by the waves.

Barrier Island Suite~41

  In the war between the sea and the sand, the hurricane had gained some ground, as the east point of the island had been wiped away.   Yet the change was magical. All along the beach, he found ravishing jewelry, the scintillating colors refracting in foam.

 

/

-/

-·

VI Claire de Lune

44~Dunkelberg

Great Spirit Road One summer after art school, he hitched through the hills of Pennsylvania, an itinerate painter and railroad worker, bought a leaky old canoe,            loaded provisions, and floated down the Ohio into the Mississippi. He navigated channel islands,            explored levies and river cities, and wound through oxbows            and meanders, arriving home            fevered and exhausted from bailing whole rivers and foraging in the corn. Other times he bicycled along the Gulf from the Everglades to the Padre Islands            exploring bayous and coastal watersheds or trekked like a vagabond through France                                                from the galleries of Paris to the caves of Les Eyzies to witness prehistoric herds flicker by faint lantern light. Or years later with his young wife,            he canoed again down the Ohio into that great river, camping on sand bars, where they stripped to swim together, nearly drowning in the deep            icy water, the way he drowns now

Barrier Island Suite~45

                                    in a New Orleans cancer ward            with the labored, raspy breathing of blood                                                             in his lungs and a tumor                         like a fist. Yet in his mind’s eye,                                     his spirit soars over water   a flock of white pelicans coursing            in chevron upriver on the flyway                                     spreading out over wetlands            along tributaries to reach                                                summer breeding grounds                         in the great northern lakes and marshes,   traversing the continent to return            to gulf islands each winter, their migration                                     as certain as the spinning spokes            of his bicycle or the potter’s wheel,                                     omnipresent            as the golden spiral of the sun.

46~Dunkelberg

Father of Waters The figure of a man, feet planted in the mud of the river, his beard swirling in the river’s eddies. The figure of a man, swimming the river, his eyes, brilliant as an eagle’s, his lungs, the lungs of a continent. The river absorbs the mud from his fields, washes the sins of his cities, the blood from his tumultuous flooded delta. The river drinks in the bourbon streets of his mother city, washes his sins and silt clean into the gulf to form islands. Migrating mallards course his watershed Searching for food and shelter in his reeds, where antlered deer also come to drink. There, the possum and raccoon wade in his rushes and fish his muddy waters for the channel cat and alligator gar. There, the orange sun transforms to a fish, bluegills and turtles feed on frogspawn, and the little green heron guards her nest. There, you find the figure of a man with antlers of a deer, antlers that transform into tributaries, spreading north to reach the aurora borealis. The figure of a man, his features dark as the waters, his eyes as clear as the stars, his beard swirling in the blood of this river.

Barrier Island Suite~47

The Little Room Unlock the padlock and open the door to the little room of the cottage, a room he built to be the nursery for a first child, but never used. Illness intervened and over the years it became an inner sanctum, a holy of holies for the artist who covered its walls with a mural, a psalm to the sun. In the east on rose-colored cloud-chariots, you drive off the darkness, oh Lord, oh sun. You bring life to the world, as the starry night slinks back to its forest shadows on silent paws. The lions lie down with the lambs, blue jays and sand hill cranes rise up in your light. Goats frolic on the slopes near Oldfields, and the bushes and streams are filled with the songbird’s chorus of praise to the warmth and splendor of your rays as you rise triumphant in the heavens. In the heat of the day, oh Lord, as the great disk of the sun, you cast your healing rays on all the lands, like a great zinnia, your petals extend to all creation, fragrant and mild. You cause the winds to blow and the grasses to grow along the river where the doe grazes and the mother alligator guards her nest of eggs. You bring the blackbird his song and chase schools of minnows to flocks of skimmers. You bless the labors of every living thing, bringing heat and sweat to the laborer and cool shade to the weary and afflicted. You cause the rivers of the heavens to overflow with gentle rains, and you stretch your bow from the distant islands onto the shore.

48~Dunkelberg

In the west you rest your head on pillows of waves, while flocks of sand pipers settle in the reeds, the leaves of tree and creeper glisten with mist in your fading light, and the night, like a cat, creeps in on silent pads in search of prey. The cycle of the day is through, the creatures of the day find their rest, and yet your light never leaves, oh sun. Your rays, reflected in the moon and stars, bring to life the brilliant shades of moths, drunk on nectar, the soft wings of the sphinx, the emperor of dream, and Isis in her river spread soft light and life to the turtle and hare, to the bitterns in the reeds of the marshes. The world sleeps, blessed by your essence, in suspended animation until the chrysalis of night will slowly open and on the wings of the monarch a brilliant new day will emerge.

Barrier Island Suite~49

Annotations I was first exposed to Walter Anderson’s art when Professor Emeritus Dr. Ralph Hitt gave me a drawing of a heron, inspired by one of Anderson’s designs. Later, in 2002, Christopher Maurer brought his Welty Prize-winning biography of Anderson, Fortune’s Favorite Child, to the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium. His stories of Anderson’s journeys and struggles with mental illness inspired the first poem of the sequence, “Isle of Caprice,” and inspired me to learn more about the artist, first by reading Maurer’s biography, and then through the ultimate source, The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson. Thus it was in September 2005 with a few poems already written and with the memory of Hurricane Katrina fresh in my mind, including the news just coming out about the devastation the storm had wreaked on the coast and the flooding of the vault that held many of Anderson’s watercolors, that I headed to Hambidge Center for a two-week residency with a copy of Anderson’s logs and the hope of writing a few more poems to complete a short cycle. I never could have predicted the wealth of material I would encounter in those pages. By the end of those two weeks, I had a series of twenty poems based on the logs, chronicling Anderson’s experience of the islands, a liminal space between the land and sea, between nature and culture, between madness and conformity, where the artist could find his own sanity and make a space in which to create. As I began to conceive of the cycle as a full-length book, I broadened its vision to include Anderson’s life on shore. Working with the idea of the musical suite, which was included in the title from the beginning, I decided to break the cycle into five sections, each with its own subject and rhythm. Approaching the Magic Hour, the memoir by Agnes Grinstead Anderson has been influential to these later poems, as has been A Painter’s Psalm, Redding S. Sugg’s study of the murals in the little room of Anderson’s cottage at Shearwater Pottery, and Walls of Light, Anne R. King’s study of his murals at Oldfields, the Ocean Springs Public School and Community Center, and the cottage.

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Asylum Roads From 1937 to 1940, Walter Anderson suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized at Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Sheppard Pratt Hospital, and the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield. The details in this poem are drawn from Agnes Grinstead Anderson’s account of these years: his treatments, escapes, travels, relapses, and eventual return home (Approaching 58-82). The “asylum” of the title refers both to the obvious connotation of a mental institution and to the search for asylum as a place of shelter and protection.

Betsy The title refers to Hurricane Betsy, which hit the Mississippi Gulf coast on September 9, 1965. Walter Anderson, who had gone out to Horn Island before warnings were issued, weathered the storm on the island and describes the experience in his logs (Horn Island 226-234). As the hurricane approaches, Anderson describes the sky as “vermillion against turquoise” and an “awful sunrise” (230). Later, as the storm subsides he notes “the noble forms of the waves were gone” (231). Anderson notes the return of pelicans to Horn Island (214-15, 220, 223). After seeing three, then six pelicans, Anderson writes “time has gone back” (220). He describes finding “at least two hundred crabs that were using my footprints for beds” (220) and is fascinated by the drama of a family of blackbirds, especially the interactions between the father and one of the babies who chases him, demanding food (208, 210, & 211). Returning to where he used to stay, he finds the receding water “had built up a beach,” but his “camp was gone, simply sliced off by the waves.” The following day, he walks out to find “there is no east point; the long sand point is gone, cut off short.” Nonetheless, he writes, “Change—it is magical” and describes the foam on the beach as “ravishing jewelry” (231-232).

Birdfall The birds listed are ones Anderson describes. The conditions of migratory birds based in part on “Stopover on a Gulf Coast Barrier Island by Spring Trans-Gulf Migrants” by Frank R. Moore, Paul Kerlinger, and Ted R. Simons. Anderson writes about encountering “a symphony of birds” (Horn Island 81).

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Chandeleur “Chandeleur” means chandelier in French, and is also the term for Candlemass, when the candles of the church are blessed, the statue of the virgin purified, and the bringing of the Christ child to the temple to be blessed by Anna and Simeon is celebrated. Anderson notes seeing Venus rising on one of his trips back from Chandeleur (Horn Island 53), and he refers to the “morning star... dancing over the waves” (63). He describes the sea at Horn Island as “wine-dark” (135). He relates waking to find the dunes on Changeleur covered with flowers, including yellow cosmos (51) and Anderson tells the story of rowing to Chandeleur lighthouse to get five quarts of water from the keeper (58).

Chivaree Anderson writes of using the “military high road” to cross Horn Island (213). He used the term “progress” to describe “his method of wading, crawling, and swimming stealthily among aquatic and amphibious creatures” (Introduction to Horn Island 33), and he named an artesian spring on the island “Rabbit Springs” (Maurer 234). Anderson describes fighting off mosquitoes with Flit (Horn Island 137, 219, & 234). One morning he woke to find his “feet in a bed of stinging ants” and killed them with the spray (227). Anderson describes how a banana boat was hit by a storm and lost some of its cargo that washed up on Horn Island (Horn Island 190192), and he relates an encounter with men who banged on the boat he was sleeping under, calling one of the men “the most virtuous and self-righteous hoodlum, or chimaera, I’ve ever met” (149). He also mentions several encounters with hunters (79, 88, 90 & 190), as well as another time when someone banged on his boat in the night, theorizing “empty bottles on the beach may have something to do with it” (143).

Dog Keys Pass Sirius, the Dog Star, was the seat of Isis in Egyptian religion. Isis controlled the flooding of the Nile, so I associate her with the ebb and flow of the waves here. Anderson does not mention Sirius or Isis in the logs. Icarus is also my allusion. Anderson does not mention Icarus. Anderson had made his own illustrations to Don Quixote. See Walter Anderson’s Illustration of Epic and Voyage, edited by Redding S. Sugg,

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Jr. Anderson’s last boat was a green skiff he found on Horn Island and rebuilt: “The parts of a small skiff were laid out on the beach being washed by the waves.” (Horn Island 180).

Father of Waters This poem is inspired by Walter Anderson’s sculpture, carved from the trunk of a tree, titled “Father Mississippi” as described by Mauer and depicted in a photograph (Fortune 244-245), Anges Grinstead Anderson (129), Sugg with color plate of a Walter Anderson water color of the sculpture in the woods (Painter’s Psalm 68-71), and King with color plates of the sculpture and watercolor (Walls 95-96).

Great Spirit Road Mauer relates the story of Walter Anderson’s first trip down the Mississippi in the summer of 1925, during which he got sick from eating green corn (Fortune 36), of his travels to Spain and France, where he viewed the prehistoric cave paintings at Les Eyzies (38-39). Agnes Grinstead Anderson tells of their trip down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers by canoe (Approaching 34-40) and of his final days in Baptist Hospital in New Orleans, where he died of lung cancer (Approaching 163-171).

Horn Island Anderson describes one approach to Horn Island as follows: And certainly one of the prettiest trips I’ve ever made. I was in doubts whether I should be able to come out, but when I got to the breakwater the clouds parted from the wind’s eye—the clear newborn blue looked thru—so I was able to set my course by keeping my stern exactly on the opening between the two great wings of clouds; I believe this is called the wind’s eye… [Horn Island] was floating way up in the air and only came down when I started out towards it… The clouds in the direction of the island formed a sort of illuminated ladder—small end on the island, which was most appropriate, only celestial beings able to reach it. (Horn Island 175) In contrast, Anderson talked about “the dominant mode on shore” (Introduction to Horn Island 27). In another entry, Anderson notes: “if a man refuses to allow himself to be distracted—driven wild, mad, sick, raving—he would often realize he was Fortune’s favorite child, and not

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simply the idle ass with an empty saddle, begging to be ridden—and driven” (163). Halcyon is one of Anderson’s favorite terms for a beautiful sunny day. Anderson writes “a purple squall came up and rained” (147) and later “a black squall (purple), coming from the west, bringing a shower of rain” (212). Anderson writes of drawing trees: I like the wandering ones, not absolute freaks but not just the ordinary healthy ones, either. There are some wonderfully strange ones on Horn Island—years of storm and years of sudden growth, one side retarded and the other growing like a vine— (152) Once, walking on the beach, he “caught a blue crab, like midnight sky with stars” (143).

Island in the Stream The title is a nod toward Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream. Sugg notes, “a westering along-shore drift has carried and continues to carry the sand which constitutes the barrier islands” (Introduction to Horn Island 22). Anderson describes Horn Island as “the back of Moby Dick, the white whale, the magic carpet surrounded by inhabited space”(Horn Island 87-88). He often fed rice to blackbirds (103-106) and to grackles (210), and he gave rice and “an almost empty peanut butter jar” to some rats (117).

Islander Sugg notes that Anderson distinguishes the “islander” from the “intellectual” (Introduction to Horn Island 30). Anderson lays out this distinction in his logs (Horn Island 143). Mauer notes the parallels between Anderson’s art and the Taoist art of Wen Yü K’o and Han Kan (227). Mauer also notes the wild pigs on Horn Island: “In summer, they burrowed their way through the stinging, almost impenetrable underbrush to get around the island, and he crawled gratefully through their tunnels, blessing them for their girth . . .” (224). Anderson mentions finding a pair of shoes that fit him (Horn Island 163), I assume they washed up on the beach. He describes several encounters with the water moccasins. Maurer mentions a time when Anderson stepped over a moccasin (Fortune 225) and another when he was bitten by a venomous snake in his left hand (280-281). Anderson

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describes “a great blue heron [that] rose as if he were taking the sky with him” (Horn Island 139). Anderson rode out Hurricane Betsy on Horn Island, and though he didn’t actually lash himself to a pine, he did consider which tree he would lash himself to if the water got too high (231), suggesting Odysseus tying himself to the mast to resist the siren’s call. Anderson made his own illustrations to The Odyssey. See Walter Anderson’s Illustration of Epic and Voyage, edited by Redding S. Sugg, Jr.

Isle of Caprice The story of the Isle of Caprice casino and Anderson drinking fresh water from the pipe was related by Christopher Maurer in a lecture at the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, Oct. 18, 2003, Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Mississippi.

Magic Hour Anderson writes of “the magic hour before sunset, when all things are related, and are organized thru color” (73). He describes mangroves as “terribly vital; the life of their roots cannot, apparently, wait for the normal course of sap to go up the trunk and branches so forms hundreds of pulpy tuberous forms which cluster around the main plant” (66), and he describes these tubers “standing up like cypress knees” (57), between which he finds fiddler crabs: they crawl out of their holes and begin their rhythmic dance to the sun, moving their bodies either to the right or left, then raising their large claw.… And man if he his the observer and has his back to the sun must give the effect to them of some huge presence, beneficent and terrible between them and the golden disk of the sun. (66)

Mississippi Sound “When skies above” cf. the Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, which I have taught in my Early World Literature Survey. Tiamat and Apsu are the primal elements or first gods, though their names are also Sumerian for sea water and fresh water respectively. Anderson makes no reference to this myth in his writings and likely did not know it. Anderson does use the terms Zephyr and Boreas for the North and South winds (Horn Island 99-100, 108 & 179).

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Natural Law This poem is closely paraphrased from Anderson’s undated log entry from 1950 (Horn Island 81-82). I consider this a found poem, since I have done very little to change Anderson’s language other than to bring it into the form of the other poems in this section.

Nature Morte “Nature morte” in French literally means “dead nature,” but usually refers to a still life painting or drawing. I play on both meanings in this poem. Anderson fed a family of blackbirds rice from a board (Horn Island 103-106), and he describes seeing “my friend the Red Winged Black Bird fly by showing his epaulets” (47). He tells how he rescued over three dozen crabs that had collected in a pool of fresh water (116117). He also caught and drew a Redhead with a broken wing (170) and another with an injured leg that later swam away after being fed minnows (176). One of Anderson’s first pets was a lesser scaup he named “Simy” (90). A few days later, Simy died in captivity and was buried at the top of a sand dune (92).

North Key Sugg describes the origin of the Chandeleur Islands, of which North Key is a part, as “the remains of the ancient S. Bernard delta of the Mississippi River . . . low-lying sand flats and shell banks ” (Introduction to Horn Island 23). The flora and fauna mentioned in this poem are drawn from Anderson’s descriptions of his early visits to North Key (Horn Island 43-76).

Nullah A nullah is a gully or ravine. Walter Anderson used this term for any marshy water. Agnes Grinstead Anderson recounts the story of when their son Billy was sick with a high fever. Alone with just Billy’s nurse, Walter drove the boy to the hospital in Biloxi, but when told he had appendicitis and would need an operation, took Billy out of the hospital and bathed him in a nullah, cooling the fever, after which Billy recovered. She quotes Walter’s explanation, “I think that Billy and I became one with the time and the place and with whatever beneficent genie presides over nullahs.” (Approaching 93-95).

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Ocean Springs This poem is inspired by the murals Walter Anderson created for the Ocean Springs Public School and the Ocean Springs Community Center, which can be viewed at the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs (along with the Little Room murals, which are the subject of their own poem). These are the only murals Anderson did for a public space. Reproductions and a discussion of the murals are published in Ann R. King, Walls of Light, to which this poem is indebted.

Pot of Gold One day, Anderson notes that “the flies were horrible coming thru the woods.” (Horn Island 140). On another day he writes “All yesterday afternoon I drew Peeps, returning home at sunset following a procession of Peeps, with a rainbow behind me. One end was on Round Island, the other where I had dug up the empty pot—surely it must once have had gold” (158). After finding a pair of shoes, Anderson describes himself as “Fortune’s favorite child” (163). Later while out beachcombing, he finds a book “The Pageant of Literature” (188), and another time he found a boat washed up by a storm and laid out in pieces on the beach (180). He also “found a strange dark bottle with with little white shells growing to its neck and drank from it a rich syrup of rum or some liqueur” (157) and later “a bottle with a little Port Wine” (164). Anderson describes “doing a water color of ghost crabs. Their legs have wonderful gold hair on them” (122). One October he finds Horn Island covered in goldenrod (161-163). On an earlier trip to North Key, he described seeing “[one] enormous flaming red cloud with the pallid moon shining white through it” (63).

Sand Mountain The Taoist principle of wu wei refers to the principle of non-action or action without action, sometimes translated as responsiveness. Sugg describes the origin of the Mississippi barrier islands from the Appalachian mountains eroded by what is now the Tennessee river and carried to the gulf along what is now the Tombigbee through Mobile Bay (Introduction to Horn Island 22).

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Sea Oats An early poem in the cycle, this poem was not based on Anderson’s logs.

Settlement The website “Mississippi Barrier Islands: A Guide for Kayakers, Hikers, Campers, and Naturalists” notes “presence of arrow heads and Indian artifacts on Horn is evidence of the presence of Native Americans, probably the Biloxi tribe.” Sugg describes the names and early history of European exploration and settlement of the barrier islands (Introduction to Horn Island 21-22).

Silent Spring The title is a reference to Silent Spring by Rachel Carson that documented the devastating effects of the pesticide DDT on bird populations, including the brown pelicans of Louisiana. Anderson describes the feeding of young pelicans, “Today I assisted at an orgy, a religious continued feast with the passion and excitement of sexual delirium” (Horn Island 73). Later, he notes, “At the promise of any kind of wind all the young pelicans get tremendously excited and face the direction of the wind and flap their wings in expectation of the time of their flight” (74). He also describes them as “tiers of pelicans hissing and squawking” (67).

The Cottage Maurer notes that Peter Anderson paid Walter $10 per week to decorate at least 10 pots for Shearwater (Fortune 274). Widgets are the small figurines sold by Shearwater, and woodblocks and linoleum refer to Walter Anderson’s engravings. Agnes Grinstead Anderson relates that he bought surplus navy linoleum that he used for engravings, printed on the back of surplus wallpaper (Approaching 117). Sugg notes that while Anderson “painted inside the cottage, he often played phonograph music, typically Beethoven, to which he sometimes danced; his feet could be heard thudding” (Painter’s Psalm 8-9). Agnes Grinstead Anderson tells of the tree house, which she called an eagle’s nest, that Walter built near the cottage and to which he carried her one night and “made love like an eagle, swooping and gyrating” (Approaching 75-76). She also notes that she and the children often

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were not admitted to the cottage (121), but on other occasions such as his return from China, the children were regaled there with his stories (133).

The Little Room Sugg notes that Walter Anderson left his hand-written transcription of the opening lines of Psalm 104 in a box with his papers found in the little room (Painter’s Psalm 15-17). Suggs draws a connection between the themes of the mural and the psalm, which “[echoes] Ikhnaton’s hymn to the sun as the creative, organizing principle in nature” (27). This hymn, often called the “Great Hymn to Aten,” as well as Psalm 104 and the images in the mural as discussed by Sugg, form the basis of the poem.

The Road to Shu The title alludes to a poem by Li Bo. Though Anderson likely did not know the poem, it is a fitting parallel to his trip to China, since Li Bo describes a difficult, mountainous journey. Anderson, upon receiving a small inheritance, left for Hong Kong in 1949, flying there with stopovers in Hawaii and Japan. After getting his passport and visa straightened out, he traveled in China on foot along the Yangtze River until he eventually had his belongings and passport stolen. He returned to Hong Kong, was wired money for an airline ticket home, and arrived back at Shearwater by bike. The account in the poem combines Agnes Grinstead Anderson’s version (Approaching 132-135) and Mauer’s (Fortune 235-243).

Thorns Anderson notes: “The oysters are much better protected. Their razor edges are vertical and woe to the hand or foot which touches.” (Horn Island 73). He also was often attacked by gnats and on one occasion took his supper in his boat on the water to avoid them (45), and he notes seeing his “thistlery… alive with hummingbirds. For some reason they go marvelously well with thistles” (110).

Undulant Fever Agnes Grinstead Anderson describes a trip made to the bayous of Louisiana to hunt wild iris bulbs, culminating in a Cajun meal with

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unpasteurized ice cream that was the probable cause of both she and Walter contracting undulant fever (Brucellosis), a long-lasting bacterial disease that can result in fevers and depression (Approaching 50-54). Some of the imagery in this poem is drawn from her description of the Christmas play Walter directed for the family, involving the four elements earth (turtle), water (a blue crab), air (swallow-tail kite), and fire (flames). She also recounts an episode when Walter was brought back nearly catatonic after en extended swim in the cold waters of the sound (44-49). Finally, she describes Walter’s attempt to take her to an overpass and jump off in front of the night Greyhound bus, which she thwarted, but which would lead to his first institutionalization (57-58).

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References Anderson, Agnes Grinstead. Approaching the Magic Hour. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1989. Anderson, Walter I., The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson. Revised Edition. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1985. King, Anne R. Walls of Light. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999. Marsh, Bob. “Mississippi Barrier Islands: A Guide for Kayakers, Hikers, Campers, and Naturalists.” http://www.barrierislandsms. com/guide.htm Maurer, Christopher. Fortune’s Favorite Child. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Moore, Frank R., Paul Kerlinger, and Ted R. Simons. “Stopover on a Gulf Coast Barrier Island by Spring Trans-Gulf Migrants” The Wilson Bulletin, 102.3, 1990, 487-500. Sugg. Redding S. Jr. Introduction. The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson. Sugg, Redding S. Jr. A Painter’s Psalm. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. Sugg, Redding S., Jr., ed. Walter Anderson’s Illustration of Epic and Voyage. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980.

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List of Illustrations

iii viii 8 14 24 30 42

"Less known for its painters and poets than for its novelists and musicians, Mississippi has for the last two hundred years contributed freely to the annals of eccentricity, of oddball genius and madness. To the unfortunate reader unfamiliar not merely with the work but with the character of the painter Walter Anderson, Kendall Dunkelberg's Barrier Island Suite will serve as an admirable introduction; to diehard Anderson fans (such as myself) it is an amplification of the mystery. This excellent book does a nearly impossible job: it yokes together the interiority of a very unusual artist while simultaneously observing him from the outside, giving us a portrait of 'the artist ...at one with creation for an afternoon, bathed in gentle sunlight: Perhaps never truly at home on earth, Anderson is finally granted by these poems a place where 'The four edges/of his sail blow to the four corners of his dream�' - T.R. Hummer, author of Skandalon (LSU Press) "In BARRIER ISLAND SUITE, the Mississippi back-bays and river and creek systems with their blue crabs, channel cats, bulrushes, mangroves, egrets, and 'Mississippi I kites flashing their tails in a warm stiff breeze; which inspired Anderson's watercolors and writings, scuttle and lean and wing and whisker and stalk to life. The most impressive quality of the collection, however, is how the poems probe the landscape of Anderson's mind: his artistic sensibility and madness, his Taoist mysticism and obsession with the cycles of nature:' - Adam Vines, author of The Coal Life (University of Arkansas Press) "Both dedicated fans of Walter Anderson and people encountering his art for the first time will find much to admire in 'Kendall Dunkelberg's Barrier Island Suite. Dunkelberg immerses us in this vivid world. He brings before us the flora and fauna of the Gulf coast waterways, as well as insights into a troubled, troubling genius whose art-like Dunkelberg's-rewards attention:' - Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Unmentionables (W. W. Norton) Texas Review Press is a member of the Texas A&M University Press Consortium Cover design: Nancy Parsons

Photo: Aidan Dunkelberg

KENDALL DUNKELBERG directs the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, Mississippi, where he also directs the Eudora WeltyWriters'Symposium. He bas published a translation of poems by the Belgian poet, Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus

(Green Integer Press, 2000) and two previous collections of poetry, Landscapes and Architectures (Florida Literary Foundation Press, 2001) and Time Capsules (Texas Review Press, 2009). His poems and translations have appeared in many magazines and in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vo. 2: Mississippi.