Literary notes with a Kingsport connection…for those who like literary notes or Kingsport connections…

Former Poet Laureate Charles Wright, who grew up in Kingsport, just published an acclaimed new book of poetry, “Oblivion Banjo.”

One of D-B’s most accomplished grads, Mike Ainslie (’61), has written a memoir about his career in the high-flying worlds of finance and art. “A Nose for Trouble: Sotheby's, Lehman Brothers, and My Life of Redefining Adversity” arrives in January from Greenleaf.

Sally Chiles Shelburne’s (D-B ’63) daughter Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne (D-B ’97) has published a critically acclaimed first novel, “Hold On To Nothing” (Blair).

There’s a new book about the old Washington newspaper, the Evening Star, one of whose stars was editorial cartoonist and Kingsport native Gib Crockett (D-B ’30).

A little more on Wright and Crockett.

To the rest of the world he is the esteemed Poet Laureate Charles Wright.

But here in his hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee he is known as Chuck.

That’s what they called him when he was a patrol boy at Lincoln Elementary School.

That’s what they called him when he was a drummer in the Kingsport Junior High Band.

And that’s what they called him when he was a police reporter for the Kingsport Times-News.

For three months in the summer of 1953 the future Poet Laureate filed untold numbers of anonymous crime reports.

Until the night of July 8, when he was sent to cover a disturbance at the City Jail.

The result was his first bylined story:

Woman Defends

Worldly Goods

Against Police

By Chuck Wright

Wright turned a routine Public Intoxication story into a mini-drama.

The City Editor must not have thought much of it because he buried the story inside, on page 14.

And he must have had a little talk with the future Poet Laureate because for the rest of the summer all of Chuck Wright’s bylined stories were in the staid “inverted pyramid” style.

But in hindsight, we can see a glimpse of the future poet.

Here is that crime story with a few extra carriage returns inserted, in the spirit of poetic license:

It was all-very routine

To the officers making the arrest.

It was simply another case

Of a person having a few too many,

And not being able to hold them

Any too well.

If it was all routine to the officers,

It was also routine to the woman

Who was brought in on Wednesday night.

Her address was listed on the complaint sheet

As “Anywhere.”

It took three good-sized officers

To get the woman to leave

The comparative safety of the police car.

She had her worldly goods

In a paper shopping bag

And among them were four cans of beer.

She didn't seem to mind

The rest of the goods being taken,

But didn't quite appreciate

The fact that the officers

Took the beer.

And she told them

In no uncertain terms.

When Wright was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2015, the Times News front page story identified him as a “former Kingsport resident.”

That’s because much as we’d like to claim him – he’s been an acclaimed poet for forty years – we don’t know exactly how.

Is he a Kingsport native? That would be the best identifier.

But he wasn’t born in Kingsport, which is the usual qualification to be a native.

Wright was born in 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee in the western part of the state. His dad, also Charles, was an engineer working for TVA. Wright has said in interviews that he has no memory of Pickwick Dam. He was less than a year old when his father was transferred to Corinth, Mississippi. They moved often till the war started when his dad landed at Oak Ridge working on the Manhattan Project.

Near the end of the war his father and another engineer, Tom Rentenbach, decided to open a construction company in Kingsport, where there was abundant work from Eastman. The Wright family moved but Rentenbach got a construction job from the University of Tennessee to enclose the south end zone at what was then called Shield-Watkins Field (it was renamed Neyland Stadium in 1962) and never moved to Kingsport.

Nevertheless the Kingsport company was named Rentenbach and Wright Constructors and opened an office at 217 East Sullivan.

Charles the future poet, now known as Chuck, enrolled at Lincoln School, where he was a patrol boy. He played bass drum in the Beginners’ Band at Kingsport Junior High. He was pictured in the Times News dancing with Miss Clara Hall at a Civic Auditorium party in April 1949. He played golf and basketball – making the paper once for scoring ten points as his Harkleroad Feed team topped J&M Furniture 21-20.

He went to Dobyns-Bennett for a time – he was in math teacher Dorothy King’s homeroom one year but spent his junior and senior years at Christ School, an Episcopal school just outside Asheville.

So he lacks the other Kingsport credential from that era, a D-B diploma.

Wright went to college at Davidson, where he pledged SAE, a fact duly noted in the Times News’ school notes column. After graduation he enlisted in the army and served from 1957 to 1961 in Verona, Italy. He has said in interviews that this is when he became interested in writing poetry. That led him to graduate school at the University of Iowa’s highly regarded writing program.

Even during his service years and his years in grad school he was listed in newspaper stories as a resident at his family’s home at 4575 Old Stage Road.

So Charles Wright wasn’t born in Kingsport, he didn’t graduate from high school in Kingsport. But he “grew up” here, according to numerous interviews he has given. Many of his poems mention local landmarks like Bays Mountain, Gate City and longtime WKPT announcer Martin Karant.

Kingsport can’t call him a “native.” I haven’t found any definition of native that doesn’t include “place of birth.”

But we can claim to be his “hometown.”

The Oxford Dictionary, the big boy of dictionaries, says your “hometown” is “the town where one was born or grew up.”

There you have it: he grew up in Kingsport.

Kingsport, Hometown of America’s Poet Laureate, Charles Wright.

XXX

In writing about the appointment of former Lincoln Elementary School student Charles Wright as the nation’s Poet Laureate, I may have skipped over a pertinent fact: What is the Poet Laureate?

When I was in grade school and junior high, the years when we read a lot of poetry in English class, the Poet Laureate was John Masefield, he of “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky.”

Technically he was England’s Poet Laureate but since this country didn’t yet have such a title, he was pretty much our poet laureate, too.

In England the title Poet Laureate was created in 1617 (for Ben Jonson) and is given by the queen (or king). It is largely ceremonial with the laureate expected to write the occasional verse for a special occasion. Still it is quite an honor.

John Masefield was Poet Laureate from 1930 till his death in 1967 so you can see why I associate his name with the title.

We didn’t have an American Poet Laureate when I was in my poetry studying years. The title was created here in 1985 supplanting the title of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, which was created in 1937. Our poet laureate still has the unwieldy title Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

The pay is pretty bad – not that poets are used to making large sums of money – at a mere $35,000 a year. Duties include overseeing poetry readings and lectures and also “promoting poetry.”

A number of states have their own Poet Laureate. Tennessee is not one of them. Alabama is. Alabama?

XXX

Chuck Mather grew up on Old Stage Road in the house next to the Wright family, which included future Poet Laureate Charles Wright.

He says he didn’t really know the Wright kids, Charles, his brother Winter and his sister Hildegarde, because they were a lot older.

But he does remember that in summers the Wrights were visited by their Texas cousins. Mrs. Wright was from Beaumont.

“When I was very young, two albino boys would come visit the Wrights. I later learned that these two boys were Johnny and Edgar Winter. Charles Wright's mother's maiden name was Mary Winter, so I am guessing that Johnny and Edgar Winter are Charles Wright's cousins.”

If you are a rock and roll fan, you should recognize the names Edgar and Johnny Winter. They had a number of hits in the seventies including “Frankenstein.” (Look it up on YouTube. You will remember it then.)

Mary Winter Wright died in 1964 and her obituary in the Times News lists among her survivors her brother John D. Winter of Beaumont, Texas.

 “Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues” lists Edgar and Johnny Winter’s dad as John Dawson Winter II of Beaumont, Texas.

That means the nation’s Poet Laureate is first cousins with rock royalty. Johnny Winter is listed in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” And Edgar Winter’s group had numerous hit albums.

Gib Crockett, Cartoonist from Kingsport

The Washington Post recently printed a generous review of a book about its longtime competitor, “The Evening Star: The Rise and Fall of a Great Washington Newspaper” by Faye Haskins.

Of course the Post could afford to be generous since it won the newspaper battle with the Star. But as the review pointed out during many of the years of that competition it was the Star that came out on top.

The Star employed many newspaper stars over its 129-year history (which ended in 1981) including columnist Mary McGrory, political reporter David Broder and editorial cartoonist Gib Crockett. And there’s the Kingsport connection: Gib was from Kingsport.

In a 1953 interview with Kingsport Times News writer Bill Freehoff Gib explained that he owed his cartooning career to the guy who sat next to him in study hall at D-B. “We were waiting for assembly. I was sitting beside Charles Stone and I noticed he was copying some funny paper characters from the Kingsport Times. He turned to me and said, ‘Why don't you try it, Gib?' I did, and I've been drawing cartoons ever since!"

At the time of the interview he’d already won one National Headliner Award – for his cartoons during the 1952 Presidential campaign – and he would win another in 1957.

Not bad for a guy who never took a single art class.

In fact he almost didn’t become a cartoonist. After graduating from D-B in 1930 he worked for a time at the Kingsport Press and then Tennessee Eastman. After three years he left for Washington and soon found work on the art staff of the Star, doing lettering and background work and the occasional sports cartoon.

His work drew the attention of The Star's chief cartoonist, Clifford K. Berryman, whose cartoon featuring Teddy Roosevelt and a bear cub had inspired Brooklyn candy store owner Morris Michtom to create the Teddy Bear. Berryman took Crockett under his wing and taught him the trade.

After Berryman’s death Crockett moved up to full-time editorial cartoonist.

He explained to Freehoff how he did his job. He started at 10 a.m. reading all the local newspapers – at that time there were the Post and the Star plus the Baltimore newspapers - then followed that with a telephone conference with the Evening Star’s other editorial cartoonist James Berryman, Clifford’s son. He and James alternated days drawing cartoons. Then Crockett would rough out a few ideas and show them to B. M. McKelway, editor of the Star, who would either accept or reject them or offer some ideas of his own. Now it was back to the drawing board.

It sounded like a leisurely way to make a living but Crockett explained it didn’t always run so smoothly. “On some occasions, Crockett said, he has been called from his bed at 3 in the morning to come down and turn out a rush job.”

In addition to cartooning Crockett also drew posters for savings bond drives and for forty years, from 1944 to 1984, he drew illustrations for the Naval Academy’s football programs.

"But I never forget," he told Freehoff, "that it was 'Stopper Stone back in Kingsport, who started me off."

Crockett probably got his start redrawing either The Gumps or Etta Kett. Those were the only two comics the Kingsport Times ran in 1928.

A couple of Gib Crockett programs for Navy games: