Tom Parks

Goodbye to a State Tom Parks

The poems and photographs in this book portray not only a state but a state of mind. For several decades, the author traveled the backroads and crossroads of South Carolina, observing and experiencing the thoughts and feelings of its disparate people - at times gracious, sometimes troublesome, occasionally alarming and regretful, always deeply engrained, and never negotiable. In these pages, you will see how love and hate and ignorance and gentility do a strange, awesome dance together, in a place where time and change must wait. Like other states, South Carolina boasts its share of official totems: its state song, state bird, nickname, beverage, fish, pet, and other fond frivolities. But after reading this collection of thoughts and images from times past and present, the reader will realize that every state, like this one, must have clearly adopted schizophrenia as its official condition: "a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perceptions and inappropriate actions and feelings." That's the kind of condition that only a volume of poems and accompanying photographs can handle: raw, in depth, stark, and cushioned with affection. This book takes the reader on an intellectual journey of the state of things in years past, beginning in the soft and insouciant foothills of the Upcountry to the preening, portentous politicians, who populate the lake-laden Midlands, and finally to the languid and languorous Lowcountry. If it's true, as they say, that life is mostly a collection of memories, then this slim volume offers its readers a profundity of historical insight, revelation, and--ultimately--truth.