James Dickey

Buck, Christopher. “David Bottoms.” American Writers, Supplement XXVIII. Ed. Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons/The Gale Group, 2018. Pp. 21–36. ISBN-13: 978-0684325170. (Published/Released September 2017.)

EXCERPT
A particularly poignant poem is “Stumptown Attends the Picture Show,” which, as the poet indicates right after the title, is “on the first attempt at desegregation in Canton, Georgia” (AH, p. 14):
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Word has come and Martha the ticket girl
stands behind the candy counter
eating popcorn and smoking Salems.
Beside her the projectionist,
having canned the Vivien Leigh
and come downstairs to watch the real show,
leans folding chairs against the theater doors,
guards his glass counter
like saloon keepers in his Westerns
guard the mirrors hung above their bars.

Outside, good old boys line the sidewalk,
string chain between parking meters
in front of the Canton Theater,
dig in like Rebs in a Kennesaw trench.
From the street, policeman and sheriff’s deputies
address their threats to proper names,
try to maintain any stability.
Someone has already radioed the State Boys.

Through the glass door Martha watches
the moon slide over the Jones Mercantile.
In front of Landers’ Drugstore
a streetlight flickers like a magic lantern,
but Martha cannot follow the plot,
neither can the projectionist.

Only one thing is certain:
elements from different worlds are converging,
spinning toward confrontation,
and the State Boys are winding down some country road,
moving in a cloud of dust towards the theater marquee.
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This poem never attracted the attention and critical claim that it rightly deserves. It is a masterpiece of understatement, an almost casual look at profound social change in progress, to which the ticket girl and projectionist are oblivious (“but Martha cannot follow the plot, / neither can the projectionist”).

In an almost documentary fashion, “Stumptown Attends the Picture Show” is a showpiece exemplifying the prevailing social “reptile brain” among many white Americans in the Deep South, so steeped as it was in racial prejudice. It is almost a perfect poem as a snapshot of that time and place, where Canton, Georgia, represents America at large.

The actual event took place on Monday, August 11, 1964, as four young African American men attempted to integrate the Canton Theater on Main Street. “Stumptown” is the nickname for an African American section of Canton, where David Bottoms grew up. We are never shown the attempted desegregation of the local movie theater (presumably by unnamed African Americans from Stumptown), but only the prelude (which could well have been the result of a wild rumor).

The siege mentality is strikingly depicted, and the poem’s ending—“Only one thing is certain: / elements from different worlds are converging, / spinning toward confrontation”— is as close as Bottoms ever comes to outright social commentary. …

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