Introduction:
Dawn Major
I was an undergrad at Kennesaw State University when I attended my first poetry reading and had the pleasure of hearing Robert Pinsky read. I can’t recall if he had already served out his term as the U.S. Poet Laureate; Pinsky served as Poet Laureate for three consecutive years, so it may have been during the time he held court between 1997 and 2000 but that’s not the point here.
The point is if that incredibly pretentious introduction of highfalutin libretti made you feel warm, fuzzy, and ready to settle into the rest of my piece about Raymond L. Atkins’ collection of poetry, They All Rest in the Boneyard Now, and Other Poems (Etowah Valley Press, 2024) then you, YOU, are the reason no one reads poetry. Atkins would probably tell you to shove that pretentious BS introduction to his poetry where the sun don’t shine, or better yet, bury it six feet under along with the cast that inspired Boneyard. And I hate to be ugly, but I needed to grab your attention because usually if there’s an inkling of poetry in the air, even a sniff of it people start looking for the nearest exits. But can you blame them?
I recently interviewed Ray (I need to drop the formality of using Atkins’ surname because Ray is in fact one my pals) about Boneyard for WELL READ Magazine. Yes, I suppose you could call that double-dipping, but the questions were very different than the ones I asked on behalf of SLR and I’m so giddy about this collection I wanted to share it with everyone. Finally, here is a book of poetry for the nonpoetry reader. Here is poetry made accessible to everyone. But do you want to know why Ray wrote user-friendly poetry? Because poetry was never meant to guarded from the masses by individuals who have a double PhD. Actually, scratch that. If you have a double PhD, good for you. Just please don’t slip your higher education into a conversation every time we meet and leave poetry alone already. After all, Caedmon, a herdsman, was credited for the first known Anglo-Saxon poem.
Anyway, I asked Ray this question: “Since becoming a poet, how many jaunty scarves and berets do you now own?” To which he responded: “Three and two, respectively. Oh, and don’t forget my poet’s jacket. It has a nice inside pocket just perfect for my absinthe.”
Two great things about the month of April: Independent Bookstore Day is the last Saturday of the month and April is National Poetry Month. On April 1st all the poets are allowed to come out of hiding and admit they write poetry and then at midnight on the 30th they run shrieking back to their hidey holes. What better way to celebrate both events then to have a poetry reading at FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA? As a sidenote, FoxTale is super supportive of their local Georgia writers and Southern writers in general. I’d go ahead and add them, dear SLR readers, to your “Indie bookstores I want to Visit” bucket list.
Ray Adkins and his jaunty scarf at the FoxTale bookstore.
If all poetry readings were like Ray’s, bookstores would start charging. I’m just saying that you might want to start attending local poetry readings. Ray as the latest poet raconteur on the scene made quite the grand entrance wearing a beret, smoking Gauloises. He was followed by no less than five Beatniks dressed head to toe in black sashaying around him Audrey Hepburn style. Think Funny Face. Ray probably should have retired sooner because Rome, Georgia, may not be ready for Southern novelist turned rogue poet/rockstar. This is what happens when you wait too long to express your true poetic badass self.
As much as I wish this scenario had played out this way, I admit this was a product of my imagination. There was, however, a small ceremony acknowledging Ray’s new status, if even for one day, as Bard of the South, whereby I donned him with a crushed velvet scarf a/k/a “the jaunty scarf.” Have it known far and wide that on April 27, 2024, Raymond L. Atkins came out of the poetic closet, admitted that he had been secretly writing poetry all of his life, read a few poems whilst wearing “the jaunty scarf,” then announced that this will be his first and last collection of poetry. He ended his poetry reading by requesting that another audience member—an up-and-coming poetess of the tender age of sixteen who has self-published her first collection— read one of her poems. Asking another poet to read at your poetry reading. Well, that’s rockstar enough for me! And who needs Aubrey Hepburn when Ray’s lifetime muse, his wife Marsha, was in attendance. As for the jaunty scarf, it left upon the neck of the poetess extraordinaire.
I guess since Ray is claiming to be done with poetry, it made sense to pull out all the toys in the toy box. My dog Bruno does something similar with his basket of toys when visitors come calling. Boneyard is in both metered verse and free verse and boasts a haiku and a limerick. To ensure that pesky urge to publish a second collection didn’t start biting at him later, he purged himself by adding the caveat in the title, “And Other Poems,” which accounts for poems about the living and are otherwise are not accompanied by an illustration. Although, thematically, he didn’t depart too far from the departed with these poems which I will illustrate later.
With poems like “Brownie the Depot Dog,” “Little Gracie,” “Elvis Presley,” “Everything I Know about Edgar Allan Poe I Learned from Freshman Essays,” and “Robin of Loxley,” the collection pays tribute to all creatures great and small, though predominantly dead. Boneyard, like the cemeteries it honors, is a hodgepodge of the famous, those made famous by death, and even some so obscure as to be titled “unknown”—there are three poems titled “Unknown (Dates Unknown)” The humorist you have come to love in his novels is in full force here. In “Dr. Robert Battey (1828-1895)” he pokes fun at humanity’s vainglorious attempts to cling to life after death. No giveaways. Buy the book.
But my very favorite part about Boneyard is that this is an ekphrastic collection of poetry. Blah, blah, double PhDs, blah, blah. In layman’s terms, ekphrastic poetry draws inspiration from a piece of art. Think John Keats “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” or for a little more modern example, Anne Sexton’s “The Starry Night.” Of course, poets aren’t limited to artwork. Cemeteries gravestones, mausoleums, and memorials work, too. Are you imagining Ray’s eyes rolling back in his head as he convenes with the dead? Though he may not have needed to find his muse by dancing naked under a blood moon, he irrefutably drew upon the energy evoked from cemeteries.
I particularly loved “Infant Archer (1928,)” which is an envisioning of a full life for baby Archer. Another tear-jerker with a mysterious tone is “Mary Knox (1876-1889).” Yes, poetry is emotive, and you are allowed to shed a tear. Not everyone honored in Boneyard may be found in a cemetery. “Mound D” was inspired by the Etowah Indian Mounds and also a poignant comment on commercializing a culture’s dead: “The silent dignity / of a solemn barrow / abiding in a green field / enfolding its charges / for all time / seems diminished / by the visitor center / the snack bar / and the gift shop.”
Dawn Major introduces Ray Adkins and Evelyn Mayton at the FoxTale Bookstore.
Originally, Ray photographed the sites depicted in the collection, but he wasn’t pleased with the outcome of his photos. He reached out to yours truly to see if I might know someone around town to illustrate it. There are a lot of great things I get out of being one of the associate editors with SLR. One of those fantastic perks is getting to meet artists, editors, publishers, photographers, publicists, and other writers. I’m not sure if Evelyn Mayton and I had become friends through SLR; she is, however, a huge advocate for Southern writers, dead or alive. But I do recall messaging via Facebook. Sometimes, social media will give you an Easter egg. Evelyn and her musician partner, Monte McCraw, drove all the way from North Carolina to view the William Gay exhibit, “Mystery Outside the Frame: The Literary Landscape of William Gay,” and listen to the panel I was on at the Decatur Library for the 2023 Lost Southern Voice Festival. We share an equal love for art and literature, particularly when they merge, so we were bond to be friends one way or another.
I jokingly refer to Evelyn as “Faulkner’s number one fan girl.” But in all seriousness, she does a stellar job as the administrator of William Faulkner’s Official Facebook page and she has illustrated two books about Faulkner. One came out the same month as Boneyard, so she’s quite a busy lady. Though she’s well known for her portraitures, I was attracted to her ability to capture the spirit of a lost place and time. Her renderings of a decaying southern landscape literally being consumed by Mother Earth and her elements is what made her perfect for Ray’s project. This collection would work as a teaching tool to engage new readers of poetry. The images provide further insight or a deep interaction between him and his subject matter. The synergy, or that collaborative space that Evelyn was able to capture for Ray through the photos he shared with her and her own interaction with his prose, doesn’t grow on trees.
But here’s a fun thought. I’m also a member of the Horror Writers Association Atlanta Chapter, and I know incredible artists through that connection. What if I had suggested someone other than Evelyn Mayton? Might this collaboration have turned into Rosemary’s baby? But alas, the stars aligned, and the Bard of the South met the Illustrator of the South, and Boneyard was born with ten fingers and ten toes.
Why does poetry have a bad reputation and how can we change this?
I didn’t actually tell you about what happened at Pinsky, but I think it’s important in understanding the statement, “poetry is dead,” and how we can change that sentiment, and how Ray with Boneyard has helped improve poetry’s bad reputation.
During the Pinsky period, I was in my twenties and was trying to find myself. For a small period of time, I hobnobbed with an academic crowd. I had joined Sigma Tau Delta, which is an English honor society, but to our credit we weren’t nerds in name alone. We did cool stuff, and I was right in the thick of it. From the proceeds of our book drive and additional donations, we were able to get furniture built for a children’s reading room at a local homeless shelter. We stocked the bookshelves by asking for children’s books as an entry fee for an evening of KSU’s authors. So, good stuff. On paper I fit in. I mean I got good grades, but I never felt like I belonged. I never felt smart enough. Plus, put a glass of wine in me and I’ll drop f-bombs left and right. So, for the safety off all, I opted to forego the invite to attend Pinsky from my newfound literary mates. I took my best friend Shane, who could quote Pinsky from memory like a champ. Truthfully, Shane was more of a partner in crime. Anyway, we were ecstatic about the opportunity to hear Pinsky.
The venue was a large auditorium absolutely crammed full of somber poet types and halfway through the event, Pinsky introduces a poem he wrote inspired by a traumatic event—his mother fell on her head. In that dead silent room, my partner in crime and I simultaneously snickered, and it didn’t end there because while Pinsky explained how this singular event profoundly affected his life, he repeated, “my mother fell on her head” over and over. Every time he spoke that line, it elicited more and more suppressed laughter. We attempted to disguise our guffaws as severe coughing fits. And listen, we weren’t laughing at what happened to Pinsky’s mother at all. We probably would have found something else to laugh about. It was how over the top everyone was acting. He’s a big deal, but it was just so uptight, man. If you put me in a serious environment, I’ll turn it into a circus. This is why I can’t go to group meditation or yoga. We were getting looks and I feared our behavior would be noticed by the powers that be. We almost had to leave, but luckily the introduction to the poem and the poem itself was short-lived (as it ought to be at a reading) and Pinsky was onto the next poem.
New poets house rules or “what not to do” for the seasoned poets a/k/a killers of poetry at a poetry reading:
1: Absolutely stick to the time allotted. In fact, plan for less time so you can engage with the audience. When in doubt, read less, not more. I understand. You’ve been waiting for this moment of self-validation for like ever, but it’s not time to bring out the saga.
2. If you are sharing time with other poets or writers, be cognizant of not spilling over into their time. I’ve been in a couple of scenarios where I came last at a speaking/reading event and was cut short because the people before me weren’t economic with the time and therefore took a chunk of my allotted time. Not cool.
3. Your title, or if untitled, will suffice. Expounding for five minutes upon your haiku before reading it is like sitting in the breakroom while your coworker recalls last night’s dream that you’re not even in. Your audience may feign interest, but I promise after the fifteen-minute mark if not sooner, you’ve totally Charlie-Browned them. You may talk briefly about how the collection connects thematically before or after your reading. But unless you are the U.S. Poet Laureate or Raymond L. Atkins—who by kept it casual, read a little, cut the you know what with the attendees, read a little more, cut the $%&# one more time, and finito—your poetry reading at tops should about twenty minutes including the brief introduction the person hosting the event reads to the audience. Please do not list every now defunct journal your poems are published in, but do list names people might recognize. No one wants to hear your CV read out loud.
4. Dramatic pauses should allow just the right amount of time for the audience to know you have stopped reading. Give them time to clap (but don’t expect it) before you start reading your next poem. Don’t get weird on us. I don’t need a long period of reflection. Think “moment of silence” and cut it by 99.9 percent.
5. You were born in Middle Tennessee. When did a 19th century English aristocrat possess your body? Oh? This is the voice of your muse, you say. Here is my response to that, “my mother fell on her head.”
6. I should stop at five here, but I’ll add one on behalf of Ray who would say for you to “not expect anything but to maybe to see some old friends and have fun.”
I kid you not, I have sat through a two-hour poetry reading in the past. Painful. I’m not just picking on poets. I’ve sat through a similar situation with a fabulous short story writer who read a fabulous story that lasted almost that long. People don’t have attention spans. I’m positive I’ve lost half my audience by this point with this piece. Hello. Is anybody out there?
This brings me to the “do what I say, not what I do” part of this piece. Come on. I got to do one deep dive. Plus, he read “Snippets Overheard at the Atkins Family Reunion,” and it went over well, and warned you about this earlier. See what I mean about self-elucidating titles? I had a poet friend, Sharon Wright Mitchell, who passed away recently offer this piece of advice to poets: “I have heard some experienced poets say you should save the poem that has the most impact for last, but I’d rather people leave with a smile.” She has left me smiling and so did Ray.
On the surface “Snippets Overheard at the Atkins Family Reunion” appears to be a humorous accounting of random conversations made at a family reunion, but there’s a little bit more than meets the eye here. Hold your horses, I’m about to introduce you to a highly academic abbreviation you can use to impress your most posh friends. It’s called “DHM,” and, no, it doesn’t treat PTSD, although I could see its benefits. “DHM” stands for “Deep Hidden Meaning,” which I am about to unleash upon SLR readers.
The verses in the poem encapsulate the best of the best from the Atkins’ family reunion. And much like a gravestone, they also serve as a timestamp by paying tribute to a very specific family on a very specific date. After all, do you think one might hear “Don’t eat the banana pudding. Granny put Ritz crackers / in it again” at the Pinsky family reunion? And not to get dark here when you thought you were dealing with a lighthearted poem, but “Snippets” also reasserts the inevitability of death. Time is figuratively and literally ticking down every time the refrain “what time is it?” is repeated. Of course, it’s probably the number one overheard snippet of the day at any family gathering, which makes it even more cleverly woven into a poem about a man, let’s go ahead and name that man, Raymond L. Atkins, who is contemplating his own death and when it will occur.
Oh, but Double PhD argues that I cannot assume the poet is the narrator here. This could be the fictional narrator questioning his own mortality. To which I ask, “Did you notice the image on the cover?” Could it get any clearer? The man put a tombstone with his own name on it with literal daisies pushing up amongst the weeds.” I don’t think I need to go DHM any longer, but if Double PhD is still seeking the profound, the cover art offers a bunch of mementos mori to ponder upon. A raven, Mardi gras beads, a half-smoked cigarette, a bottle of whiskey, a peacock quill, and coins for the ferryman should keep Double PhD spinning in symbolism for a while.
They All Rest in the Boneyard Now, and Other Poems is a phantastic smorgasbord of poems and illustrations. Raymond L. Atkins gathers souls from amongst the rich, the poor, the best and the worst of us from all walks of life. In addition, the collection offers a one-stop book for teaching poetry because of everything I mentioned thus far. If poetry is dead, then this collection just found it a heartbeat.
Introduction to Interview:
I’m fortunate to have had award-winning Southern fiction author and essayist as a mentor while I was pursuing my creative writing degree. His mentorships and summer residency workshops spaces filled up quickly and for good reason. He’s written five novels—Set List, Sorrow Wood, Sweetwater Blues, Front Porch Prophet, and Camp Redemption, as well as an essay collection, South of Etowah— and has now added a collection of poetry, They All Rest in the Boneyard Now and other Poems, to his oeuvre. Atkins is a writer’s writer and I’m honored to be able to introduce his first collection of poetry to SLR readers; it’s a small token of what he’s done for me.
Dawn Major
DM: I only recently discovered your first love was poetry, but I suppose I should have suspected after reading your last novel, Set List, where you wrote, or rather your characters co-wrote original lyrics. Do you think that novel gave you the impetus to pursue a full collection of poetry? Also, lyrics being poems, are you also a musician?
RA: I am primarily a novelist and sometime essayist, but the truth is that I have always been a secret poet. My mentor at an early stage of my literary development was one of my English professors, Kenneth Anderson. He was a poet as well as an educator, so it was not surprising that he encouraged me to follow the path of verse. My first sojourn into creative writing came during my undergraduate years in the late seventies and early eighties, and the initial medium I chose was poetry, although I later gave the genre up in favor of the novel. I found, as Robert Penn Warren once did, that “poems eat novels.” Also, and I can’t stress this enough, I was at that time perhaps the world’s worst poet. Lately, though, I have gotten better.
In response to your other question, way back in another life I was the bass player in a bar band called Skyye. The experiences I had during that short but fun career became the backbone of Set List. My life experiences often lead me to the keyboard. I guess you could say I write autobiographical fiction (and poetry), but I am in good company there.
DM: One of the things I love about your writing and about you personally is your sense of humor. You have persevered as a satirist and comedic writer in a time of cancel culture. Do you ever have moments where you hesitate or even self-ban because you’re concerned about a reader lashing out?
Ray Adkins
RA: My sense of humor has been a source of trouble for me my entire life. I very seldom try to be funny, because to me humor is not something that can be forced. But it is a quirk of mine that I find much of the world around me—and many of the people in it—to be for the most part hilarious, and my habit of observing and commenting upon this is where my reputation for being a humorist comes from. There are of course a great many things that aren’t funny and never will be, and there are a few areas I won’t go, but not that many.
When it comes to editing myself to avoid possibly offending someone, I just don’t worry about it. I am pleased when readers like what I do, and I am disappointed when they do not, but mostly I just try to write what is on my mind and in my heart and let the words fall where they may.
DM: Whether it’s your first or fifth book, each time you publish something new you expose yourself to criticism. Do the pub day jitters ever go away?
RA: I had them with my first book, because it was all new to me then, and I was reminded of the ubiquitous dream of standing at a podium in front of a large crowd and discovering that I was not wearing pants. It wasn’t much of a concern after that. Oddly enough, though, I had the jitters a bit with this last book, because I wasn’t sure how my poetry would be received.
DM: Evelyn Mayton’s illustrations add breath to images already made vivid by your excellent prose. But any time you add another element like illustrations there’s more work involved. Why was it important for you to have images accompany your poems?
RA: The illustrations were important because they inspired the poems. I believe that the poems stand on their own well enough, but the synergy between the poetry and the pictures that inspired it was an important factor. I also want to take a moment for a shout-out to my awesome illustrator, Evelyn Mayton. She took a stack of photos that were never meant for anyone but me—a couple of them actually have a thumb in them—and with her keen eye turned them into images that augment and enhance the poetry. She is a true artist.
DM: I’m not the first one to say they would buy the collection based on the cover alone. I understand you worked with Mandy Haynes through Three Dog Press. Between the illustrations and the cover, will you describe what other writers who may be interested in pursuing a similar endeavor might expect?
RA: The cover was designed by Mandy Haynes. It is based on the emoji she sends to me every month around the 25th or so when I haven’t gotten my column in yet. Okay I’m just kidding with that one. Mandy is a true Renaissance woman with many talents, and when she showed me what she had in mind for the cover, I knew she had designed the perfect one. She also formatted and edited the book. If any of our readers are ever in need of these types of services, I can’t recommend her enough.
DM: You didn’t go with a traditional publisher with this collection; you went out on your own. What spurred this decision and how does it feel to be overseeing the course of Boneyard from start to end?
RA: My longtime publisher took a pass on this book, which was a disappointment. Sadly, I’m not getting any younger, so I decided that the quickest way to get the book out to the readers was to just do it myself. In the process, I discovered that I loved both the freedom and the timescale. Due to the nature of the business, the traditional journey from submission to publication is often a year or longer. My project timeline start-to-finish was about sixty days. I have two other books in the creation stage, and unless I change my mind, I will likely bring these out as well under my own imprint, Etowah River Press.
DM: Let’s say a SLR reader (hmm…) was interested in creating a scavenger hunt using Boneyard, how many sites would that involve? Though mostly inspired by gravesites at cemeteries, you also authored poems inspired by a Native American Indian burial mound, grave markers at forts and train depots, a sunken ship, and a bed and breakfast that burned down. What I’m trying to convey to our readers is the scope of this project. Will you speak about that?
RA: If a reader wished to retrace the literary steps laid out in the book, they would need a full tank of gas and a sack of sandwiches. Many of the sites are in North Georgia, but there are also prompts from as far away as New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, and Michigan.
DM: I have a burning question about the poems “Committee,” “The Pine Valley Elementary School Halloween Parade,” and “Tales of a Cat Mafia,” which seemed to have been inspired by the living—human and feline. Am I wrong? I wasn’t sure if “Cat Mafia” was something of a pet cemetery. For the poems that aren’t based or otherwise inspired by the dead, what made you decide to add those in?
RA: Those poems and a couple of others fit under the category of “And Other Poems,” as mentioned in the title. Basically, I just really liked these and thought my readers might, as well. This will probably be my only poetry collection, so I thought I had better take the opportunity to share them while I had it.
DM: Ray, thanks for always going there and for straying into unchartered territories and genres. On behalf of Southern Literary Review, we wish you the best with this collection and look forward to your future endeavors.
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