AMENORRHEA?

While we're on the subject of Appalachian lunacy, check this plenteous list of what signified insanity in Victorian-era West Virginia, from Dave Tabler's bounteous Appalachian History site.

And what constituted insanity to West Virginia authorities in the late Victorian era? Marjorie E. Carr published a pamphlet in 1993, now in the Weston Hospital Collection at the West Virginia Archives and History, that tells the history of Weston. Her pamphlet includes the following from the first log book used at Weston (spelling & punctuation left as in the original):

REASONS FOR ADMISSION
WEST VIRGINIA HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE (WESTON)
OCTOBER 22, 1864 to DECEMBER 12, 1889

Amenorrhea
Asthma
Bad company
Bad habits & political excitement
Bad whiskey
Bite of a rattle snake
Bloody flux
Brain fever
Business nerves
Carbonic acid gas
Carbuncle
Cerebral softening
Cold
Congestion of brain
Constitutional
Crime
Death of sons in the war
Decoyed into the army
Deranged masturbation
Desertion by husband
Diptheria
Disappointed affection
Disappointed love
Disappointment
Dissipation of nerves

Dissolute habits
Dog bite
Domestic affliction
Domestic trouble
Doubt about mother's ancestors
Dropsy
Effusion on the brain
Egotism
Epileptic fits
Excessive sexual abuse
Excitement as officer
Explosion of shell nearby
Exposure & hereditary
Exposure & quackery
Exposure in army
Fall from horse
False confinement
Feebleness of intellect
Fell from horse
Female disease
Fever
Fever & loss of law suit
Fever & nerved
Fighting fire
Fits & desertion of husband

Gastritis
Gathering in the head
Greediness
Grief
Gunshot wound
Hard study
Hereditary predisposition
Ill treatment by husband
Imaginary female trouble
Immoral life
Imprisonment
Indigestion
Intemperance
Interferance
Jealousy
Jealousy & religion
Kick of horse
Kicked in the head by a horse
Laziness
Liver and social disease
Loss of arm
Marriage of son
Masturbation & syphillis
Masturbation for 30 years
Medicine to prevent conception

Menstrual deranged
Mental excitement
Milk fever
Moral sanity
Novel reading
Nymphomania
Opium habit
Over action on the mind
Over heat
Over study of religion
Over taxing mental powers.
Parents were cousins
Pecuniary losses: worms
Periodical fits
Political excitement
Politics
Puerperal
Religious enthusiasm
Religious excitement
Remorse
Rumor of husband's murder or desertion
Salvation army
Scarlatina
Seduction
Seduction & dissappointment

Self abuse
Severe labor
Sexual abuse and stimulants
Sexual derangement
Shooting of daughter
Smallpox
Snuff
Snuff eating for two years
Softening of the brain
Spinal irritation
Sun stroke
Sunstroke
Superstition
Supressed masturbation
Supression of menses
Tabacco & masturbation: hysteria
The war
Time of life
Trouble
Uterine derangement
Venerial excesses
Vicious vices in early life
Women
Women trouble
Young lady & fear

link: APPALACHIAN HISTORY

Sources: http://www.trans-alleghenylunaticasylum.com/main/history3.html
http://www.lindapages.com/marshall/mental.htm
http://www.wvculture.org/HISTORY/collections/ms2008-085.html

publication

it is excellent to appear alongside so many of my east tennessee homeez
well done, all

"Hot Pressed Glory Ass" (FOUND POEM)

Postcard to Melissa Poem

PREFERRED SEATING AT CHUMLEY'S

From ancient corner snug, or booth,

it is possible to observe

the waitresses who serve

to ravenous drunken youth

barbarous and uncouth

baskets of sweaty lobster.

It’s all you can eat lobster.

Lobsters, to be quite honest,

.

really make me want to hurl

I am only here because my girlfriend is Molly.

.

Lobster is grasped by youth in glittering forfex,

ripped apart and sucked, people crunching

and ripping and sucking

and laughing like death was a dream.

Gula! Gluttony!

All you can eat? Gula!

Gluttons put their brains to bed

with gooey toys.

.

My seat is a little too close to the fire.

.

A family of Labradors congregates

under my table. Mother flops,

babies settle down, blinking

in the firelight, their cocoa fur

spangled with sawdust.

.

Of all the actresses working here

Molly is prettiest,

but she’s not an actress—she’s the real thing.

.

With brain simmering

I wait until Molly comes by

and slams another mug of beer in front of me.

I didn’t even ask for it

which is the magical thing about it.

.

But word comes from the bar that Angel is dead.

Cleaning the Chumley’s bathrooms,

dumping the wastebasket, Angel got jabbed

with a dirty syringe, whence he contracted AIDS.

I’m lucky:

I’m alive.

I’m human.

My girlfriend is Molly.

Molly works at Chumley’s.

Ergo my beer is free,

I think.

.

Angel: not so lucky.

.

At this stage of the evening

I have crippling vertigo and euphoria,

my eyes are glowing somewhat.

I have a cigarette but not a light.

I am not smoking yet I am burning.

Heat without ignition. Burning

without purification.

.

No matter. I am only here in a monitoring capacity.

.

Molly is so beautiful, everywhere she goes

she is importuned with vain hellos.

.

etymology:

molitrix: female contriver

mollesco: I soften

mollicella: dainty

mollipes: soft-footed

mollitudo: tenderness, softness, sensibility

burning dog hair

alerts me once more to my surroundings.

.

The youths have departed.

At the now-deserted table: lobster corpses, ragged claws.

The whole joint is littered with body parts

each gutted carapace a successive mask

of gula.

.

Antonio, Angel’s brother, clears away the mess.

Molly claims the heartless gratuity.

OCTOBER 31, 2007: Letter to W. Whitman

I consider I am lucky, being American,
for I needn’t cross the ocean
(or else consider the passage of too much time)
to talk to you, which I am glad for
lest I shouldn’t make the journey.

So I suppose I am lucky.

I know a young man who lost his comrades
fighting in Iraq, all killed except for him
and he took for himself the name Lucky
And ‘Lucky’ he will always correct you
if you call him by his Christian name,
which is Edward, or Mike.

And here I lie, sick and trembling with a fever,
sick and trembling, lying in bed. 'Tis Halloween.
I am alone in bed, because my people
are trooping through the jungle, through the night
in crazy clothes that are the rags of time.
They are happy.
And I suppose that I am happy.

Now I am alone,
shall I assume I am writing a poem,
that I am writing this poem,
and that this is the poem I am writing?
If I am writing like you is your voice my voice,
is my voice yours, or was it ever not?
Could I ever choose but to take you at your word.

Insert shipbuilding metaphor!

My people are dressed as monsters
while I am sick in bed
My people are dressed as monsters
and I, here, with hellish head
today have begun to write inside your book
with my own stubby pencil to underline
inscribe in margins thoughts and unthoughts.
For years I have kept your book pristine and virginal
but now upon its many leaves
I write my clumsy messages.

I study your book. I am looking there for anger.
Will I find it?
Is there not anger in your book of everything and everyone?
And is it yours as well, or only mine who look for it?

My people return from pilgrimage,
they shout and bring me chocolate,
offer to me and cover me with sweets,
changing their minds at the last minute,
‘You can have that one—NO!—this one.’
And I am writing my poem to you,
prophesied, of not completely covered, by yours to me.

Ista terra, non est

There’s no such place as Outremer.
Though there I fought, and pillaged and burned,
and long been heart-sick for it,
I since have learned
there’s no such place as Outremer.

Extraordinary Rendition

Once you have been translated into Dutch, things begin to move very quickly.

Last night I staggered home from prodigious celebration to find that Dr. Matthew Hussey, Secretary of Translation and Rendition for commoncrofts, had overseen the translation of 'Chainsaw Friend' back into English.

I was right: it was much better. Here, beginning with the quotation of Terence, is KETTINGZAAGVRIEND, extraordinarily repatriated. T


"I are people: I proclaim nothing to make to have with people strange for me"
--Terence, "Zelf-Pijniger"

"The one moment is you a squirrel beetje
sauce gnawing to a nipple
and a thinking none angry is possible
and the other moment lies spread your brain
concerning very the bunch."

I remind themselves that you said hunt
that then we squirrels were.
That was nevertheless terrible.
That was we entirely.

It is as if you sit now once on the top of the world,
and it are fulfilled then of vague uncertainties.

For the squirrel it is difficult
explain how such things happen:
mechanical error
a vertekening a whim of nature
never is possible you finding.

And that does not make you pisnijdig?

In any case, me regrets that I had you dead saw
but I had really that guard, guns, oar loops,
bayonets, muntstukken and what
already no longer from the civil war necessary.
(If people my disorder irritates stalks,
me that immoderate, and I realised
that this the same impact at you,
for this reason I have done what I thought must do.)

These objects are simply fabulous,
man, you had nothing vandoen with the Confederale army
(yes! your head is appropriate exactly in the bucket.)
As I said already, I weet that we always
best maatjes were our life long,
but the way you let me touch never
to your guns, oar loops and bayonets, however,
which annoyed me enormously,
and I realised myself that you
very inadequate there life approach on kept.

Consequently zaagde you
by my best old friend
already seem I that now, however,
strangely looking at to this treasure
and the mixture with cement
meantime thinking of our involvement with the squirrels
in Kenosha
and the strange things which rose then in your head...
You were right then with that gezegde of you:
"life is the ultimate sacrifice"
friend, who is truth.

But stopper with that gelul now,
I must hurry myself I but not my car
keys have left behind in Missouri!

KETTINGZAAGVRIEND

That's right, Leatherface. I have been translated into Dutch.
You can find "Chainsaw Friend" in Dutch on Het Oog Vaan de Roos Internationaal Poezine, with a click: KETTINGZAAGVRIEND.

I can't read Dutch but I expect it rather gains in translation.

Thank you, Henri Thijs!

Whoever you are!

Your servant's poem 'Chainsaw Friend' featured

as part of Dissident Editions' page of the month for April. Check it out via link below, and do explore the rest of this genius website devoted to outlaw poetry, naked philosophy and megaliths.

BEYOND THE PALE

My thanks to Anthony Weir!

commoncrofts: for the coterie

nec dignitas nec superbia neque aut rubor coram vobis--neither dignity nor pride, nor shame either, before you--my motto to the coterie. If you are reading this, you're in the coterie.

Fantastic. Thanks for being here.

THC III

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,

Singing together.

Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes

Each in its tether

Sleeping safe

on the bosom of the plain

Robert Browning: 'The Grammarian's funeral'

De dementia belli: from the Latin of Lucan: Pharsalia I.1-16

We sing of war that is worse than civil 

waged on the plains of Emathia,

and of legality conferred on crime; 

of a mighty people who began to turn, 

with all dexterity, to gutting itself; 

of blood hatred between citizens; and how, 

in the sequel of tyranny’s broken contract, 

the shocked powers of the world then stood

guilty and exposed; and standards concussed 

standards, and eagles crashed into eagles,

and javelins everywhere just going berserk... 

What febrile turpitude, O citizens! 

O countrymen! what vicious lapping and plunging! 

To the people of nations hateful to us 

you made a spectacle of Roman gore: 

our deaths to entertain the enemy! 

And all the while proud Babylon stood ripe 

for spoliation (but no you couldn't be bothered),

and all the while the ghost of Crassus skulked 

lonely and unavenged. I know not why, 

but it pleased you better to wage unwinnable wars. 

 And now look: so much blood on Roman hands… 

How much sea and land might that have bought! 

Zones where the Titan comes, where Night sifts 

recondite stars, where the midday is full 

of fragrant burning air… 

 line 3: the translator is not ashamed to say he could not improve on J. D. Duff's translation of iusque datum sceleri (Harvard UP, 1928).

[ November 3, 2004 ]