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Show notes: https://www.johnfiege.earth/37-isabel-duarte-gray-tennessee-valley-authority
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Isabel Duarte-Gray’s poem, “Tennessee Valley Authority,” takes its title from the energy company and public utility created by Congress during the New Deal and owned, to this day, by the federal government. Through hydropower projects and other economic development programs, the Tennessee Valley Authority sought to modernize and electrify the Tennessee River Valley, which stretches across parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.
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By damming the river to create lakes and power, the Tennessee Valley Authority successfully created many jobs and lifted multitudes out of poverty, but there was a price for these large scale transformations. Entire towns and the surrounding ecosystems were flooded. 125,000 people were relocated. In 1966, the Tennessee Valley Authority dammed the Cumberland River, submerging the town of Kuttawa in Western Kentucky. All of the town’s residents were moved to a new location, which was then also named Kuttawa.
This town, Kuttawa, is where Isabel Duarte-Gray grew up—just one fascinating piece of her background. Her mom’s family has lived in the area for generations, but her dad walked with his siblings, unaccompanied, to the United States from Mexico when he was eight years old. Isabel grew up poor, between Mexican and white Western Kentuckian cultures, not fully at home in either, and then she found herself at Amherst College, followed by Harvard University for her PhD.
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“Tennessee Valley Authority” probes this history and relationship to land, imagining the creatures that have been displaced and observing the ones that have taken their place. Isabel explores her complex relationship to home, which invites us to do the same.
I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis. You can subscribe at johnfiege.earth, where you will also find show notes and all episodes of the podcast, plus my writing, photographs, and films.
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“Tennessee Valley Authority” is one of the poems in Isabel Duarte-Gray’s collection of poetry, Even Shorn, which won the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature, was a finalist in Poetry for the New England Book Awards, and was named to “The Best Books of 2021” from the Boston Globe. She is now Assistant Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.
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This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. I spoke with Isabel on June 29, 2022.
Here is Isabel Duarte-Gray reading her poem, “Tennessee Valley Authority.”
Tennessee Valley Authority
by Isabel Duarte-Gray
The corpse boat split the lilies
in a black and heaving ribbon
in a final day on earth.
This lake ain't lake the way a god
shapes lakes with claws of ice.
A living man remembers when this hole
was not a place of many waters but
a city drowned in just a day.
Underneath the lilies can't you see
the roofs where finches threw a nest
for sowing panic grass and babies.
There was brides made in this place
where herons sweep at corners.
Mudcats breed here now their knowing whiskers
rooted. Home the only thing to root here
in these rooms we cannot save.
Notes and Media Recommendations
Credits
This episode was researched by Lydia Montgomery and edited by Sarah Westrich. The podcast assistant is Domenica Klamm. Music is by Daniel Rodríguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.
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