Writer Lewis Nordan Dies

Lewis Nordan
From "Humor, Heartbreak and Hope"

It’s been more than 20 years now that I was first introduced to Lewis “Buddy” Nordan, a writer and teacher. No, I didn’t meet him personally, but through his novel The Sharpshooter Blues, a gift from a friend. I was instantly hooked, eagerly devouring his books and short stories about the residents of Arrow Catcher, Miss. and elsewhere – tales told with that potent Southern concoction of humor and brutality.

His best-known work was Wolf Whistle, based on the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. It concerns a black teenager, who, like Till, is murdered by Southern whites for allegedly making a suggestive remark – a wolf whistle – to a local white woman. In Wolf Whistle, Nordan employs a unique writing technique, narrating the tale through  multiple points of view, including the point of view of the dead youth himself and even a couple of crows!

According to the New York Times obituary, Nordan “did not begin writing until he was in his mid-30s and did not publish his first book until he was in his mid-40s, was the author of four novels, three volumes of short stories and a memoir.”

A teacher of writing with more than two decades at the University of Pittsburgh, the Mississippi-born Nordan was still able to produce critically-acclaimed works of art and developed a cult following, of which I was a proud member. Among the awards he received for his writing were the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the American Library Association Notable Book Citation, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the American Library Association Notable Book Citation.

In a 2002 article appearing in the Pitt Chronicle, the newspaper of the University of Pittsburg, Nordan told reporter Patricia Lomando White that every time he sat down to write, he’d offer up a brief prayer to the gods: “Make me a great writer.”

 “I guess I could pray, ‘Make me a good writer,’ be a little more humble, but I say, ‘Make me a great writer,’ not a published writer, not a famous writer,” he said. “That’s what I’m working toward.”

And a great writer he was.

Three Poems by Matthew Germenis

"Ruby, My Dear"*

by Matthew Germenis

My mistress's eyes are nothing

like Monk and Trane -

erratically living in Carnegie Hall.

They are elderly canaries,

plainly set apart by a plain nose

underneath a plain dome;

front lips disappearing on a horizon

of unpolished chrome.

Rusty bolts in the corners of her mouth

squeak, rattle, even clang a little

when she speaks in scratches

through glass teeth jagged brittle

cracked minutely and bent as matches

used for fires and light of the past -

now just archaic symbols

of the music of voices,

the jazz of eyes,

that never seem to last.

A City Kind of Pain (How to Feel Blue)*

by Matthew Germenis

I smelled the ocean where there was none,

lifted dew beads from Jew beards

& was axed to pieces by an Ethiopian sax player

stranded on the corner of an abandoned amusement park.

They tried to tell me of their pain in cracked-glass English

& how it was the same as mine,

Taller than boy soldiers from their homeland,

Superman of Supermen, midnight in strength.

No, I’m not from Sierra Leone &

the dirt wars, stick wars of Bed-Stuy

are nothing like the sun of a civil war.

& the chicken-heads w/ swollen veins

on 19th century stoops,

are deformed Palestinian women,

& the shopkeeper on Prophets Street

caught in the diameter of the bomb.

These are just chicken-heads on the stoop,

veins dripping, dripping.

Gentrification is coming! The boy soldiers are coming!

I smelled the ocean again,

saw the white gulls perch on top of a pier

As “Acknowledgment” was played.

They taught me how to feel blue,

but it was too late.

I already knew. They already knew.

& so we cried together,

not knowing why.

Heartbreak*

by Matthew Germenis

The ideal way for me to deal with it is to clam up and become an oyster in the bottom of the ocean and make pearls for the rest of my life and give them to no one because they belong only to me, I made them with my salt and sand, and I alone will see them glisten in the saliva sunlight of memory, you cannot have it, I refuse to give it to you, did you make it? Did you spend eternity on the ocean floor with the darkness of day? Did you have any other God besides the under-belly of sharks? Did you bathe with the monks in the reefs? No. This pearl is mine alone, and the only way for you to have it is to shuck me.

Reprinted with permission.

About Matthew Germenis: An English major at the University of Southern Mississippi, Matthew Germenis was born and bred in Queens, New York. He enjoys the works of Malamud, Baldwin, Scorsese, Bergman, Kubrick, Paul Simon, Dylan, Mozart and Miles.

Follow Matthew at http://germenis.tumblr.com/

 *Copyright 2011 Matthew Germenis

Copyright 2012 Donald G. Redman

A 'Miraculous' Little Book

I’ve recently stumbled across one of the sweetest little children's books I’ve ever read. “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,” by Kate DiCamillo. It’s a terrific story about a stingy, smug china rabbit whose cold heart is about to be warmed by the likes of a fisherman and his wife, a hobo and his dog and a young boy and his dying sister.

“Edward Tulane” is simply beautiful…tender…

Outstanding illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline.