Friday from the Archives: “Lyrical Journalism, Investigative Poetry” by Rebecca Duncan from NCLR 28 (2019)
Our friends at the North Carolina Poetry Society announced the winner of the Brockman-Campbell Book Award for best new full-length poetry book this week. One brief line on the webpage gave the quest for this Archive piece: “Formerly the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Award (1977-1996)” Luckily, with over thirty years of NCLR issues covering hundreds, if not thousands of writers throughout NC, a quick glance at our comprehensive index yielded this fascinating tribute to Mrs. Brockman, a journalist and poet from Gastonia.
Duncan writes an insightful overview of Brockman’s literary career. “In North Carolina, Zoe Kincaid Brockman leveraged her position as society editor of the Gastonia Gazette to discover a writing voice that chronicled twentieth-century life through insightful columns and nationally recognized poetry. Her reporting, commentary, and verse – developed concurrently – blend the linguistic and cultural conventions of journalism and imaginative literature. As she helped to develop the Gazette, Brockman pioneered many of the standards and practices of today’s professional journalists. In her poetry she revived classic forms and rhythms to explore and express her inner life and topical themes. These two strands of her writing life are woven together throughout her career.”
“From a young age, Brockman worked seriously at the craft of poetry and in 1920 won her first prize, awarded by the North Carolina General Federation of Women’s Clubs. In 1932 she co-founded the North Carolina Poetry Society and served as the group’s first president.” Duncan stated. While her newspaper column nominally focused on “women’s interests” such as weddings, home-making, and gardening, she included many literary references.
Eventually, she also wrote about weightier matters like grief over her daughter’s death and anger about near-cosntant war, after witnessing its impact on her son. Duncan postulates it is this later work that both made Brockman proud but also left her alienated in Gastonia. She wrote, “Although sure of her voice and encouraged by some of the most accomplished poets, writers, and journalists of the state, she also cultivates a certain aloneness, as celebrated in her poem “In Praise of Loneliness”:
The lonely hold enchantment in their hands,
Theirs is the breadth of sky, the sweep of sea,
They know white moonlight’s searching, cool demands,
The urgency of bloom-embroidered tree.
The lonely lie awake while others sleep, –
Companioned people, happy and at rest, –
They watch the sky as night grows still and deep,
And strange, dark music beats against the breast.
The lonely have a sixpence, bright and new,
They spend it daily, yet it reappears
In dawn, in sunlight, in the argent dew,
For sustenance through solitary years.
The lonely live apart, yet worlds they own,
Since they were fated thus to walk alone. (Heart 53)
Congratulations to Michael Hettich on this year’s Brockman-Campbell Book Award.
And read the entire article on ProQuest now or purchase a copy of the 2019 issue with the feature “North Carolina African American Literature”.
