Considering Words Received, February 14

Abstract

Considering Words Received, February 14 Rose McLarney (bio) Opening is one term for what archeologists do—or have wanted done—to mounds built by ancient cultures.Like Mann Valentine, amateur, private collector, who senthis sons to the mountains of the South to acquire artifactsin 1870. With their family money, and name suggestiveof hearts of crimson, proclamations of romantic feeling. It's February. The month, in 1828, when the Cherokeefirst put their language in print, publishing a constitutionthey had to write the year before, in order to defend theirindependence, in the country where their ancestors hadlived forever. The month, in this century, of walking aislesof embellished greeting cards, or out in leafless, cold dark. Valentine's Meat Juice, medicine Mann patented, sourceof his fortune, was a demonstration of love for his sick wife,according to the History with Testimonials he self-published.Which also tells of the liquid being made by tearing asundermuscular fibre, and adoption of judicious pressure, liberatingfrom the entire body all the constituents contained in it. Looting, violating. That's other vocabulary for excavatingthe sites of past civilizations, for taking pottery fragmentsaway—the lips of jugs, the body shards—to be displayed.Valentine's heirs did this nearby, but not in my county,at least, where no one would answer their propositions ofbuying relics or give information on mounds' locations. Now, signage directs the gazes of drivers-by over the riverto a mound, a curvaceousness of land subtler than a hill. Still,much is beyond grasp of people like me—in no part Cherokee.The characters of their syllabary on placards crook, curl, evadeEnglish grammar. And what has survived in mounds so far willbe left buried, at rest. Just down the road, at another mound, today's archeologists are passing sensing tools above—not digging in or disturbing—the soil. Studying, more thanhigh structures leading men met atop, pits for storing sweetpotatoes, indicators of where houses had been. Houses were [End Page 94] the property of Cherokee women. And the quiet days in theirsmall shelters—these are the occasions I want to observe. By which I mean celebrate. What is to stay unseenhere includes hearths, bowls, jars—that much is known,can be detected. Such pieces of evidence are referredto as signatures. As in sign of a claim placed, a truthvouched for, a declaration to which all agreed. Meansby which a letter's writer, with firmness and flourish,marks its closure. [End Page 95] Rose McLarney Rose McLarney's collections of poems are Forage and Its Day Being Gone (Penguin Books) and The Always Broken Plates of Mountains (Four Way Books). She is co-editor of A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia (University of Georgia Press) and Southern Humanities Review. Rose is Associate Professor at Auburn University Copyright © 2022 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents