Spotlight On Writers
Ed Sams
- Where do you originate from?
I come from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, the greenest state in the land of the free, like Davy Crockett says. To get to the place where I was born, you first had to get to Newport, the county seat, then travel a half an hour past the Devil’s Apron Strings and the Galloping Sluice to arrive at Del Rio. Del Rio, pronounced DELreeo, is a little community of white gingerbread houses that was once called Big Creek when it was a thriving lumber town. We lived just two miles outside Del Rio on Laurel Creek. There, my father had a farm of fertile bottoms by the French Broad River. A farmer could not plow a furrow back then without uncovering Indian arrowheads. It was a world of mysterious rooms, quirky characters, and colorful figures of speech.
- What do you cherish most about the place you call home?
I have two places I call home. One is here in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the Monterey Bay and the other is back in East Tennessee high on the Appalachian Mountain range. California is where I have been happy, where I plant my flag, where I cannot imagine living anywhere else, yet when I go back home I find the land softer, the air sweeter and I breathe easier than I do here. A part of me there never left.
- What ignites your creativity?
Superstitions. When I was seven, I found an entry on Superstitions in my Golden Book Encyclopedia and was amazed. Here was something worthy of serious study that every adult I knew disregarded. From that point, on I began to learn all I could about superstitions, legends, old wives’ tales, everything in the oral tradition. Superstitions with their sympathetic and contagious magic have their own poetry and provide many of the ideas for the stories and poems I write. I like how these products of the imagination have no authorship, how they sprang upon human consciousness all on their own, as inspirations do.
- Do you have a favorite word, and could you incorporate it into a poetic phrase?
Looking back at the various things I’ve written over the years, I find that the moon appears a lot. The moon has always been an intriguing place of mystery and possibility, where lost things are found. I like what Alexander Pope writes in ‘The Rape of the Lock:’ Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere/Since all things lost on earth are treasured there./There broken vows and deathbed alms are found/And lovers’ hearts with ends of riband bound (although here Pope suggests these treasures are things that never existed in the first place).
In the 16th century epic ‘Orlando Furioso,’ Ariosto’s vision of the moon is also a place wherein is wonderfully stored/Whatever on our earth below we lose/ Collected there are all things whatsoe’er/ Lost through time, chance, or our own folly here. When Orlando loses his mind over the loss of his love, Angelica, a trip to the moon leads to a flask conveniently marked “Orlando’s wit,” and he is restored.
I like Ariosto’s moon more than Pope’s, because Ariosto’s is such a potent symbol of the subconscious. That dark side of the mind where are kept all the secrets we hide from ourselves. It is a worthy theme to explore and has been for centuries. Even as early as 39 B.C., the Roman poet Virgil writes, Carmina vel caelo possunt deducere lunam, which I read as, “Songs are able even to draw down the moon from the sky.” Of all the impossible things mentioned in Virgil’s eighth eclogue, that is the most implausible, but I believe poetry can open the mind to release feelings and truths about ourselves we did not know were there. Through writing, I learn more things about myself that I always hoped were so.
Now, to incorporate my favorite word into a poetic phrase!
That sly old harvest moon
Shines like a brass spittoon.
- What is your pet peeve?
Strangers calling me on the phone at all hours, wheedling me for money, especially before 7 in the morning and after 8 at night. I especially get peeved when the caller asks how I’m doing. I tend to say things like “I laugh all the time but forget to smile,” or else I say, “I’m great! Thanks so much for asking,” then hang up. I love flustering a robocall by interrupting to ask, “Are you a robot?” It always hangs up in alarm. If it’s a charity calling, I do feel that I should hear them out, but then I ask if the caller is paid or a volunteer. My favorite charity is always a Native American one. I don’t understand why Indian giver is so pejorative when I get such good swag from these charities: mittens, aprons, tribal cookbooks. I guess as peeves go, it’s a good pet to feed.
- How would you describe the essence of Ed Sams?
I am left-handed. In the little mountain community where I was born, that was peculiar, so I was considered odd. As a boy, I leaned into this difference, as though it were a distinction, sometimes startling people with my oddness. I grew up feeling sympathy for anyone deemed to be different from the herd. I think that’s where I get my love of superstitions, debunked theories, and discarded traditions–anything dismissed by right-thinking people. It’s where I get my distrust of popular opinion, best practices, and conventional wisdom. I see what’s right, and I take what’s left.
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