Remember the Brotherhood

Poems of Carter Lee Aldridge

Carter Lee Aldridge, Matthew Robb Brown

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781666737769, 9781666797596
• eBook ISBN: 9781666797602
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry
• Index: Literature

Matthew Robb Brown met Carter Lee Aldridge at Saginaw Valley State University in 1973. They continued a friendship in Midland, Michigan, built around God, the arts, music, the outdoors, and literature--especially poetry--until 1978, when Aldridge moved, with most of his family, to Georgia to mitigate what they thought would be serious consequences from the energy crisis of the 1970s. He and Brown had corresponded before, and now continued this correspondence, sharing artworks, news, thoughts, and poems, until Aldridge's passing in 1990. Remember the Brotherhood contains all of Aldridge's known extant poems, plus found poems that Brown has created from their letters (Aldridge's language could be and often was poetic in all his writings), plus commentary and a few relevant poems by Brown.

Part One

Carter’s Original Poems

Dawn

by Carter Lee Aldridge

Dawn,

Amber refraction along the heart,

Crystal autumn.

Frog on the road in spring

Like a leaf flapping over in the wind,

Seasons in a song, the old world,

Wells with butter cups and violets,

Mushrooms that paint themselves in

With deft strokes overnight—

For all things spare and simple, Lord,

Thanks be to thee.

Holy, Holy, Holy

by Carter Lee Aldridge

I stood in the wind-rhythmed field,

Alone and full of circles;

I blessed the Sun with an apple

In my hand; forever supple, forever,

Are the Kansas-curtains of wheat blowing

That soothe away all my madness

With an inexorable repetition . . .

Holy, Holy, Holy . . . .

The Humble Rain

by Carter Lee Aldridge

The humble rain

Falls in the lonely gutters . . .

How it conforms

To everything!

A leaf lies draped

Over a curb

In bland surrender.

So patient and submissive it is!

It condones every level.

Seeps and seeks the crevice,

Flows underground,

Emerges in the leafy wood,

Underguise of minerals,

Perpetrator of quiet rot,

The fumes of it coming forth

From the squelched wood.

[Copied into notebook in 1974]

[Humble Rain, alternative or original version]

by Carter

A leaf lies draped over a curb

In bland surrender.

Humble is the rain,

For it conforms to everything,

Seeks the gutter

At its own cost,

Surrenders to the drain,

Takes every hue,

And uses every crevice

As its home.

Humble Rain, another version

The humble rain falls

Into...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Part One: Carter’s Original Poems
• Part Two: Found Poems
• Appendix
• Bibliography