HOME FROM KINDLING WORDS - VISITING BREECE D'J PANCAKE'S GRAVE
As I watch friends dig out from the big snow over this past Friday and Saturday, I am feeling particularly grateful for a weekend of inspiration and rejuvenation at Kindling Words the weekend before. How lucky we were to have that time before the storm shut down airports and roads! Time to channel all that energy into new work. Time to silence the inner voice that says "you can't do it." Time to find my way back into the story.
Last week I made a road trip to do some research for my current work. As I was near the cemetery in Milton, WV where the writer Breece D'J Pancake is buried, I decided to stop and search for his grave. This is something I had always meant to do as I have long admired Pancake's work. On this day, the sun was shining. The hilltop where the cemetery is located was quiet with a gentle breeze. I found the marker in the newer section.
Not far away was this piece of funerary statuary.
If you know the story of Breece D'J Pancake, you will appreciate why I found it appropriate that a lamb stands guard over his resting place. Pancake was a gifted young writer whose life came to a violent and tragic end when he was only 26. Cynthia Kadohata wrote a beautiful essay about making a pilgrimmage to this gravesite in the Mississippi Review in 1989. Here is how it begins:
A few years ago, when I first read Breece D'J Pancake's stories, I knew I had to know more about him. The Atlantic Monthly Press published his collection of stories in 1983, four years after he killed himself at age twenty-six. The collection, tense and paradoxical with startling descriptions, is written as if Pancake were possessed by his home state of West Virginia the way you can be possessed by another person. The paradox is here: these are stories about the power of redemption that are also about the power of sin, stories about estrangement and empathy, stories about disorder in which everything seems to happen for a reason, stories about leaving that are also—always—about staying.
I went to search for Pancake this year,...
The entire article used to be available on-line via a google search. That does not appear to be the case now, but here's a link in case you want to locate it. http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/bre...
Susan Straight talked about reading THE STORIES OF BREECE D'J PANCAKE in an episode of "You Must Read This" on NPR. You can find it here. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
And if you are interested to learn more about Pancake's life, there's a good biography by Thomas E. Douglas entitled A Room Forever.
Pancake's letters are as haunting as his stories. Here's an excerpt from one of them. It was written to his mother while he was studying at the University of Virginia.
I'm going to come back to West Virginia when this is over. There's something ancient and deeply-rooted in my soul. I like to think that I have left my ghost up one of those hollows, and I'll never really be able to leave for good until I find it. And I don't want to look for it, because I might find it and have to leave.
Last week I made a road trip to do some research for my current work. As I was near the cemetery in Milton, WV where the writer Breece D'J Pancake is buried, I decided to stop and search for his grave. This is something I had always meant to do as I have long admired Pancake's work. On this day, the sun was shining. The hilltop where the cemetery is located was quiet with a gentle breeze. I found the marker in the newer section. 
Not far away was this piece of funerary statuary. If you know the story of Breece D'J Pancake, you will appreciate why I found it appropriate that a lamb stands guard over his resting place. Pancake was a gifted young writer whose life came to a violent and tragic end when he was only 26. Cynthia Kadohata wrote a beautiful essay about making a pilgrimmage to this gravesite in the Mississippi Review in 1989. Here is how it begins:
A few years ago, when I first read Breece D'J Pancake's stories, I knew I had to know more about him. The Atlantic Monthly Press published his collection of stories in 1983, four years after he killed himself at age twenty-six. The collection, tense and paradoxical with startling descriptions, is written as if Pancake were possessed by his home state of West Virginia the way you can be possessed by another person. The paradox is here: these are stories about the power of redemption that are also about the power of sin, stories about estrangement and empathy, stories about disorder in which everything seems to happen for a reason, stories about leaving that are also—always—about staying.
I went to search for Pancake this year,...
The entire article used to be available on-line via a google search. That does not appear to be the case now, but here's a link in case you want to locate it. http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/bre...
Susan Straight talked about reading THE STORIES OF BREECE D'J PANCAKE in an episode of "You Must Read This" on NPR. You can find it here. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
And if you are interested to learn more about Pancake's life, there's a good biography by Thomas E. Douglas entitled A Room Forever.
Pancake's letters are as haunting as his stories. Here's an excerpt from one of them. It was written to his mother while he was studying at the University of Virginia.
I'm going to come back to West Virginia when this is over. There's something ancient and deeply-rooted in my soul. I like to think that I have left my ghost up one of those hollows, and I'll never really be able to leave for good until I find it. And I don't want to look for it, because I might find it and have to leave.
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