Thinking Culturally: An Insider's Perspective

Volume 31
Fall-Winter
2005

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A transcript of a panel presentation from the New York Folklore Society’s Field Trip, “Writing Folklore,” held in collaboration with the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center and City Lore, Inc., on September 24, 2005, was published in Voices, Fall-Winter 2005.

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Thinking Culturally: An Insider's Perspective: A Panel from the New York Folklore Society's Writing Folklore Conference

For the transcript, visit the 2005 NYFS Field Trip webpages.

As part of the NYFS’s recent Writing Folklore Conference, Steve Zeitlin led a writing exercise based on the beginning prompt “I am.” Here is one participant’s submission.

Eating Alone

I am from fields of manure and wheat,
from cow corn high enough to hide in,
from
creek beds of violets, daffodils

I am from stone springhouses, from
bottles of milk and cream
shuttered, cool in August noons

I am from smokehouses, from
hooks and hatchets, from
blood and feathers

I am from farms with two houses,
the small one for grandfather and
grandmother
when deep-veined hands drop from
tractors, from

cauldrons of corn meal mush
I am from winding staircases and attics,
from
gauzy curtains in summer’s night
breezes

I am from jar after glass jar of tomatoes,
green
beans, peaches, and applesauce, but
I am also from chow-chow, dried corn,
horseradish, scrapple

shoo-fly-pie, schmeerkase, sauerkraut,
souse, and
all those other foods you
won’t eat with me

—Margaret Yocum

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