Ghost Gear

Author : Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 102 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (612 download)

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Download or read book Ghost Gear written by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghost Gear is an account of the author's childhood experiences growing up in a working class neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. Coming from a family of intellectuals (the author's father was a Professor at Vanderbilt University and mother was a Special Education teacher and Political Consultant) and from a family that did not attend church, the author was at all times integrated and yet separated from the other people living in his neighborhood. The neighborhood itself was fractured, made up of white, black, working collar, impoverished, and single-parent families. It was situated just north of Interstate 40, just south of an upper class neighborhood, just west of the projects, and just east of the city limits. All of these influences came together in Sylvan Park when the author was a child, creating a hostile environment where kids roamed the streets and alleys, fathers worked overtime at the nearby Ford Glass Plant, and the author spent much of his time avoiding other kids, hiding out at Richland Creek or in the abandoned train yards. For many years the author blamed his father for buying their house in Sylvan Park three weeks after he was born. His father knew what kind of environment he was buying into, and he made it clear to his son from day one that learning to live in a middle/lower class setting would be good for him. To supplement his experiences there, he often took his son fishing, camping, hiking, rock climbing, and caving at the various locations just outside of Nashville. When they would go on these excursions into "the wild," or so his father called it, he'd tell stories of his own childhood: a near drowning by a tidal wave on the Aleutian Chain, a near snake bite in the black willow swamps of Shreveport, Louisiana, sleeplessness at the hands of a science fiction radio-story, another near drowning at Lost Creek Cave, and, finally, the first time his son caught a trout. These stories in many ways framed the author's growing up and created who he is today: a man bifurcated, a man at once middle and lower class, a man at once the scared little boy hiding from bullies and the man who exists now without any fear in the face of a fight. The poems that have emerged from this self are of two separate sorts. First, there are the autobiographical poems that work to display the neighborhood the author grew up in, the characters who played a major part in that landscape, and the oftentimes tragic events that took place in those surroundings. The author calls these poems the "citied south" poems. The second sort of poem that comes from this time, what the author calls the "father story poems" form the basic structure of the book, telling the stories the author's father told him as a child while, at the same time, narrating his experience with these stories and how they helped make the author who he is. In each section of the book, one of these poems appears, creating the arc of the narrative of the authors' life, especially when bounced off the "citied south" poem that accompany them. Taken together, Ghost Gear hopes to speak to human kindness in the face of immense hate, frustration, and overwork. These poems also hope to show how the author has forgiven both that neighborhood and his father's decision to live there through the writing of poetry itself.