cultural idiom that parented me, too.nTaylor: Do you mean moon pies andn7-Elevens? Faulkner and O’Connor?nBlues and bluegrass?nCherry; Those things are there,nthough for me they are there on thenperiphery, not at the center, simplynbecause they were not direct influencesnon my childhood. But no, I meannthe larger themes we were talkingnabout.nTaylor: Surely, though. Southernersnaren’t sitting around in a daze ofnnostalgia, as Northerners seem tonthink. Not these days.nCherry: Hanging out on the metaphoricalnback porch of a summer evening,nmemorializing an Arcadian past.n. . . It’s true. I don’t know anybodynwho’s doing that. Did Southern writersnever do that?nTaylor: I think they did, in the laten19th and early 20th centuries. Thatnmay make for some misunderstanding,nsome misreading. I’m thinking of AndrewnHudgins’s After the Lost War,nwhich came out a couple of years ago.nIt’s a book-length poem, mostly spokennby Sidney Lanier, but the voice isninvented, not based on Lanier’s poetry.nIt’s a wonderful book, anything but annexercise in nostalgia.nProgress and nostalgia, Old Southnand New South; there are tensionsnthere still. Take the question of race.nCertainly, in the last thirty or fortynyears, it has become clear that this isnnot purely a Southern problem.nCherry: That’s true. But 1, for one, donfind myself concerned with it in mynwork, though rather more in my fictionnthan in my poetry. It’s a concern of thennovel I have in progress at this moment.nBut, you know, I’m not sure it’sna Southern concern. I live in Madison,nand the race question currently hasnpriority here. Naturally, this finds somenexpression in my work. Do you feel it’sna concern in contemporary poetry bynSoutherners?nTaylor: Yes, but I’m not at all sure thatnSouthern poets deal with it more oftennthan non-Southern poets. The African-Americannpoets who are alson54/CHRONICLESnSoutherners have had widely variousnways of handling it, or of writing poemsnin which it is not the subject. I think it’sna national question; as such it concernsnSouthern writers as much as it doesnanybody else.nBut listen: I know you’re a Southernernby birth, and largely by upbringing,nbut I wonder what’s Southernnabout your work. How do you feelnabout being called a Southern writer?nCherry: Much the way I feel aboutnbeing called a woman writer. That’s tonsay, I don’t like it, but there are plentynof things in this wodd I worry aboutnmore. I’m a writer, and I happen tonhave been born in the South as anwoman. I have this weird sense, contrarynto all theories of biological ornenvironmental influence, that I couldnjust as well have wound up in a differentnbody in a different place in andifferent time, but that no matternwhere I was, I’d still be myself I don’tnthink there’s anything mystical aboutnthis. I think I just have a very strongnsense of myself as, paradoxically, someonenable to lose herself in other characters.n1 could almost define myself asnsomeone who can be un-Southern,nun-female. Or maybe I mean someonenable to find herself in other characters.n… At the same hme, I’m well awarenof being in this womanly body andnliving in this time and this place. Andnyou? Do you think of yourself as anSouthern man writer?nTaylor: Not often. An effect of growingnup in a white male society as anwhite male is that it often takes selfconsciousneffort to think, “I’m a whitenmale.” A complication in my case isnthat I grew up in rural Virginia, as anQuaker in a Quaker community, andnhave realized since I was very youngnthat there are contradictions and tensionsnbetween those two cultural inheritances.n1 think those tensions havenbeen more useful to me as a writernthan either background alone wouldnhave been.nCherry: Yes, that’s a wonderful thingnabout the South, wonderful for thenSouthern writer, at any rate, and notnonly for the Southern poet. The Southnis a great place for writers because it isnso endlessly rich in contradictions. I’venoften remarked that I think it is verynnnhard to grow up in the South and notnbecome a writer. Those contradictionsnare so funny, and so tragic, and everywhere.nI just published the first book ofnfiction I’ve set in the Midwest, and I’venbeen in Wisconsin for going on fourteennyears now, and spent a couple ofnwinters in southwest Minnesota. Inthink I had to learn how to see thencontradictions in the Midwest before Incould write about the Midwest. Theynare here, of course, but they are subtier.nYou have to accustom your eye tonthem. In the American South, contra- -ndictions spring up in front of you ‘nwherever you go. What Southern writerndoesn’t find himself, or herself,npractically dancing, doing a dance of ‘npure delighted amusement, on everynstroll down the street?nTaylor: I know what you mean, evennthough I live where there are roadsninstead of streets. You remind me,nthough, that the time I spent living innSalt Lake City, in the late 60’s, gavenme a place to look back from. I wrotenmost of the more “Southern” poemsnin my second book while I was outnthere. Partiy, it was a way of simultaneouslyncombating, and giving in to, thenstereotyped assumptions some of myncolleagues there made about me. Of- Jnten, out there, I thought of the trap ‘nJarrell describes in one of his essays; anyoung Southern woman moves tonNew York, and people keep saying tonher, “Whatever you do, don’t lose thatnprecious accent!” and she winds upnsounding like Amos ‘n’ Andy. Butnprobably that’s an avoidable pitfall.nHow does the South look to you fromnMadison?nCherry: Henry, even as we speak I’mnlooking out at a sidewalk that’s got overnseventeen inches of snow on it, justnfrom yesterday. I’ve spent seventy dollarsnso far on getting that snow shoveled,nand there’s an irreducible residuenof ice that the city’ll probably fine menfor. And you want to know how thenSouth looks to me from here? I’ll tellnyou: from here, the South looks likenliterature. From here, the South looksnlike poetry.nKelly Cherry teaches at the Universitynof Wisconsin at Madison and isnauthor of the forthcoming The ExilednHeart, a narrative. She was the firstn