Robert Belfour and Eric Stone enjoying a laugh together during Juke Joint Festival 2012 in Clarksdale. Photo by DELTA BOHEMIAN
Thinking about how I was going to say it, ask it, beg for it, occupied my mind over the mornings, afternoons, and night times spent with our guest and friend and acclaimed writer Eric Stone during his recent stay with us. Eric and his friend, Bill Krauss, now our friend too, gave us much to enhance our experience in this unique place of ours, our home, where we were born and raised, the Mississippi Delta.
What did I say, ask, beg for when I found that perfect moment? It was to ask Eric, and Bill (hint hint), to open his heart and allow a freedom of expression to evolve and spill forth from him that would speak of his experience here, in this unique place of ours, our home, where we were born and raised, the Mississippi Delta. I wanted to entice Eric to share his experience of this place from a fresh perspective, being the world traveler he is and wise, learned soul.
Keep reading and WATCH THE VIDEO. Listen to Eric as he reads his own words which he claims are “wholly inadequate yet heartfelt musings about the Mississippi Delta.”
I am sure you will agree, the words in the title “wholly inadequate” is Eric’s stab at how utterly complicated and rich and magnificent this place is and how words, photographs, videos, paintings and such can only tickle at what we all know and love and find deep inside each one of us, people who know, and those who want to know, the Mississippi Delta. We are DELTA BOHEMIANS.
Thank you, Eric. MM
View a collection of Eric’s photographs taken during Juke Joint Festival 2012 HERE.
For more about Eric, visit ERICSTONE.com.
Here is another video taken while I was standing beside Eric somewhere near Friars Point, Mississippi on the Monday morning after Juke Joint Festival 2012. In it you can hear Eric saying, “This is so pretty.”
Hey Madge, thanks. The pictures look great with it. Maybe I don’t have to be too embarrassed about having written a poem after all.
You are welcome and my pleasure. You’re a poet and don’t know it. 😎
Eric, would you be so kind as to share the text of the poem with us? Being a writer and all, I know you have a certain way you would prefer it be formatted or spaced out…etc… Ya know?
We miss you and don’t think she need to stop at only a poem…..
My feet show it? Now I’ve got to format the thing so that when people read it, in their heads it will sound like I want it to sound. You are a demanding muse – aren’t you. I’m getting to work.
Okay, so this is it. Where there are commas, pause. Where there are periods, pause longer. Where there are paragraphs, well, I guess that’s a pause, too – do it in your head for as long as you see fit. The rest of the time just moosh the words together but make sure to articulate them.
Wholly inadequate yet heartfelt musings about the Mississippi Delta
By Eric Stone
There’s the long day’s light and the sensual bath of the air and the sweet funk earthy breezes and the dark rich loamy red and brown and black soil and the green and yellow and white crops.
There’s the river, tranquil seeming to a visitor who hasn’t lived through the flexing of its muscles, when it busts out showing everyone and everything it permits to live by its banks just who’s the boss.
There’s the sounds, the birds and frogs and bugs the creak of trees and the rustle of brush in the breezes and wind. The bark of distant dogs cough of a tractor high squeal of a saw rumble of distant thunder rubber wheels rolling along black asphalt.
There’s the blues, of course the blues, born of and borne on all the beauty and misery and majesty of the place. Torn from the souls and guts and groins of the place. Drum beaten haunted possessed rattling bones on taut flesh and on strings and on knees and tapped out by work boots on rough-hewn wooden floors.
And the people, more than all else the people. Rooted as the oldest oaks, tenuous and tendon strong as late summer cotton, near bursting with the bitter and sweet seeds and sap of blood and semen and sweat and bile and spit and piss and shit and love and joy and laughter and thoughts and words and all those wordless things, too, that speak loud and clear even when just in the faintest tickle of a whisper.
Eric, you were meant to read your own work! Incredible! Garrison Keillor is seriously like your bitch! You and Eva need a second home here! Just sayin’! 🙂
Oh yeahhhhPause longer Eric can talk to me about the Delta anytimePause longer
Loved the poemPause Loved hearing itpause Loved reading itPause longer Thank you Eric Stone for saying outloudPause What I have seenPausetastedPausebreathedPause knownPause but didnt have the wordsPause longer Inadequately Yours, jo