Scorched Earth: From Destruction to Regeneration
by Robert W. Watson
(17 October 2003)

For me, the highlight of the League of the South Institute (2001) at Abbeville, SC, was when Dr. James Kibler read from his volume of poetry, Poems from Scorched Earth. The theme of the institute was total war and reconstruction. As I have come to expect of the League of the South, the speakers offered outstanding lectures that were the products of careful research. But Dr. Kibler appealed to that part of our humanity that makes us Southern--the soul.

What is unique about this volume of poetry is its genesis. Dr. Kibler did not set out to write poetry. Rather, the poems were the outpouring of his soul after this scholar of Southern Literature at the University of Georgia spent time reading a collection of letters and diaries at the University of South Carolina. This material was written by survivors and eyewitnesses of the destruction of South Carolina promulgated by Sherman and Kilpatrick. What Dr. Kibler found from his readings left him in such a state that he could not speak to anyone for five days. The hurt, the anguish, and the shock of the sufferings of the poor, defenseless women and children of South Carolina weighted heavily upon this scholar's mind and heart. Finally, Dr. Kibler began to write, and the poetry flowed effortlessly.

Thus, the writing of poetry provides a therapeutic role for the hurting soul, not only for the poet, but for the reader as well. Poetry inoculates us against the greater sorrows in life and strengthens us to withstand the onset of the coming storms. According to Dr. Kibler, he believed that he had become the voice of those who were silenced and forgotten. These forgotten voices were the raped women, the tortured boys and servants, and the murdered slaves. All of these voices were denied to speak then, but now their blood cries from the ground. In the forward to the book, Dr. Clyde Wilson offers good insight when he states, "The Empire suffers under the poet's curse, and as wise Donald Davidson put it, the poet's curse seldom fails." The empire of the United States is indeed under a great curse, a curse for its shedding innocent blood.

Dr. Kibler has done a great service for all Americans, whether Southern or not. For the South, Poems from Scorched Earth keeps alive the memory of the suffering that makes a people one nation. These memories must be kept alive for the sake of those who suffered.

I speak for deadened earth
The clear-cut, charred and thirsty;
I cry from darkened soil
Blood-spilled.
My voice is multiple,
Shaped from tongues in dust,
Of what we saw and suffered, tell,
That it might be a record
For children yet unborn.

For the others, this volume points a condemning finger that offers no forgiveness. In other words, those who have no ears to hear will be living a lie and consciously will remain blind, because they will be without excuse. Since they refuse to acknowledge the truth, but readily deny it, bigots against the South are worthy of scorn and contempt. As Dr. Kibler writes:

Shame, the fires of those
Who gave our homes to flames,
Flames that smoulder on
Without the slimmest reparation
Of acknowledgement
Or regret.

This is an especially valuable volume of poetry, because Dr. Kibler records many quotations from the original sources that he read. In that we Southerners are accused of "revising" history in order to suit our "romanticized" notions of the South before, during, and after the War for Southern Independence, we now have a rich source of material combined into one volume. Those who deny the veracity of these quotations only need to see the documents for themselves at the University of South Carolina. But the elitists have never cared for truth. Nevertheless, the voices are here, crying to be heard.

Even dogs suffered the wrath of Lincoln's minions. Colonel Oscar Jackson of the 63rd Ohio Volunteers writes, "We were determined that no dogs should escape, be it cur, rat dog, or bloodhound; we exterminated all. The dogs were easily killed. All we had to do was bayonet them." The killing of pets before children's eyes was routine as William Simms states, "The children owned a pretty little pet, a grey-hound….Gathering up a stone, one of the soldiers watched his moment, and approaching the group where they were at play, suddenly dashed out the brains of the little dog, at the very feet of the children."

You suffered too.
It was a war on dogs as well--
On every living thing it seems:
Ages of mutual friendship
All betrayed
In one fire-breathing
Dragon day.

But what disturbed me the most was the satanic hatred (I know no other way to describe it) that the Union troops had against the Southern women of all races. The Negro women suffered the worst. Again, William Simms states in his diary, "We have been told of successful outrages upon women dwelling in the suburbs. Many are understood to have taken place in remote country settlements, and two cases are described where negresses were brutally forced by the wretches and afterwards murdered--one of them being thrust, when half dead, head down, into a mud puddle, and there held until she was suffocated." This scene is corroborated by Dr. D. H. Trezevant when he writes, "The case of Shands old Negro woman who after being subjected to the most brutal indignities from seven of the Yankees, was at the proposition of one of them to finish the old Bitch, put into a ditch & her head held under the water until life was extinct." Who will cry out for this poor black woman or the many others like her? The NAACP or the SPLC? Of course not! These Nazis are too concerned about getting rich at the expense of the poor. But a modern Southern poet will speak out.

We'll never know your name,
Maum Shand.
I call you this for lack of any other,
And so with the nameless,
The martyred of crime,
The countless unsung
Black sufferers in silence,
We sing of your pearls
Before silver bright throne.

David Conyngham, a reporter for the New York Herald writes in February 1865, "Negro women…were woefully mistreated and ravished….more than one fell victim to the soldiers' desires. The next morning their unclothed bodies, bearing the marks of detestable crimes, were found about the city." This is a very different story than the one we hear about the "liberators" of the slave. For Sherman, this was a war against women. Dr. D. H. Trezevant records, "Irene was seized by one of the soldiers and dragged by the hair and forced to the floor for the purpose of sexual enjoyment. She resisted as far as practical, held up her young infant as a plea for their sparing her and succeeded, but they took her maid and in her presence threw her on the floor and had coition with her….They dragged Mrs. Gwinn by the hair of her head about the house. She told me of a young lady of about sixteen, Miss Kinsler, whom they brutally ravished (three officers) and who became crazy from it."

Read that again. What? You can't believe that an army of the United States can be guilty of such things? That's right, coward, turn your head and deny that it ever happened.

The list of Southern martyrs long
Cries shame immeasurable,
And higher shame on those today
Who turn the head,
Refuse to see,
Refuse to do meet honor
To their pain.

While the rape of the South during the War for Southern Independence is clearly portrayed in this volume of poetry, Dr. Kibler continues the image of the scorched earth as he includes poetry about the further destruction of our Southern nation. The plundering and pillaging has never stopped. As Thaddeus Stevens said, "If their whole country must be laid waste and made a desert in order to save this Union, so let it be." Like Truman's decision to kill a quarter of a million innocents in order to save lives, Stevens's policy is the same as killing a wife in order to save a marriage. It is industrialism with its love for money that continues to destroy and burn the Southern nation.

A nation cuts our trees
And leaves our soil ragged out and charred.

It takes away our green,
The flourishing produce of our soul.
Like cream skimmed off the milk,
The trees are taken, gone.
Our crying babies get the skimmed blue-john.

The landscape still
Is bleeding from disaster's sore,
Is burned, then fired with chemicals,
Defoliate to its hardwood core.
And all to grow the nation's regimented rows.

The invasion and conquest (two words that are absent in the modern historian's vocabulary when discussing the War between the States) of the South was motivated by the empire building of wicked men. Thus, not only was there a physical destruction of the land, but Dr. Kibler sees also the destruction of the Southern soul as the love for God and home is replaced by a love for money with its getting and spending.

An empire wedded to waste
Shall perish from the earth,
He might have said in 1863.
Only a land wedded to God and land
Endures....

Yet, even though fire does destroy, it also purifies and regenerates. Nature from time to time sends lightning to the ground, which catches fire and the land is burnt. The fire removes the waste, allowing the ground to breath. Soon new growth emerges. Even this image does not escape Dr. Kibler's attention like in the poem, "On the Raising of the C.S.S. Hunley,"

Resurrection my theme.
A Burn-off regenerates
In time.

When it comes to literature and poetry produced in the United States, the only works that will enjoy a certain immortality are the books and poems that are regional. Dr. Kibler's poems are destined to become immortal, because they first speak specifically to Southern souls, and second to sensitive hearts in general. Forgotten diaries and letters locked away in the cold vaults of a university have experienced a resurrection and rebirth through Poems from Scorched Earth. Donald Davidson believed that the Southern people would become too comfortable before they decided to expel their oppressors (industrialists and apostate preachers) from their boundaries. Dr. Kibler has provided the vehicle to create a burning anger in our hearts and souls, but also a burning hope of a resurrected Southern nation that will arise like the phoenix from the ashes caused by the Yankee empire. But there is the danger of inciting the ire of wicked people who refuse to see. As Dr. Kibler says so well,

We learn each other's stories
Or kill each other off.

It is time for us Southerners to listen to the once silenced, but now awakened, voices that cry from the ground. Or as a poet of antiquity past still exclaims, "Death to all tyrants."

I hope that you will purchase Poems from Scorched Earth (109 pages). I highly recommend it as a gift for your Yankee friends. These poems will either convert them as Copperheads, or will ensure their damnation. The illustrator of the book is Manning Williams "whose vision is remarkably compatible" with the poetry. Copies of the book can be purchased directly from Dr. Kibler for $25.00 each plus $3.00 shipping, regardless of the number of copies ordered. Make checks payable to James Kibler, 211 Peters Creek Road, Whitmire SC 29178.

Deo vindice!