Fat Southern Men in Their Summer Suits, poem by Liam Rector

FAT SOUTHERN MEN IN THEIR SUMMER SUITS
by Liam Rector

Fat Southern men in their summer suits,
Usually with suspenders, love to sweat
Into and even through their coats,

Taking it as a matter of honor to do so,
Especially when the humidity gets as close
As it does each Southern summer.

Some think men could do better
By just going ahead and taking the damned
Coats off, but the summer code stays

Because summer is the time
For many men, no matter what their class,
To be Southern Gentlemen by keeping

Those coats on. So late in life here I am
Down here again, having run to fat
(As Southern men tend), visiting the farm

Where my grandfather deposited
So much of his own working sweat,
Where Granddaddy never bought into any

Of “that Southern Gentleman crap.”
Up north where I landed in the urban
Middle class I am seldom caught

Not wearing a coat of some kind. I love
The coats, and though I love them most
In the fall I still enact the summer code,

I suppose, because my father and I did buy
That code, even though I organized students
To strike down any dress code whatsoever

In the high school I attended (it was a matter
Of honor). And it still puts me in good humor
To abide with the many pockets, including

One for a flask. So whether it’s New York,
Vermont, or Virginia, the spectacle
Of the summer seersucker proceeds,

Suspenders and all, and I lean into the sweat
(Right down to where the weather really is)
Until it has entirely soaked through my jacket.

…From Liam Rector‘s collection The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago Press, 2006), available at Amazon.com.

Photo: Ned Beatty as Big Daddy in a 2003 production (on Broadway in NYC) of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Liam Rector (1949-2007) received an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His books of poems include The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago Press, 2006), American Prodigal (1994) and The Sorrow of Architecture (1984). Rector’s honors include fellowships in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Friend to Writers Award from PEN New England. He served as poetry editor of Harvard Magazine and as associate editor of Harvard Review and Agni. Rector taught at Columbia University, The New School, Emerson College, George Mason University, and elsewhere. He founded and directed the graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College, and administered literary programs at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. (Read more at poets.org.)

Author photo by Star Black

Editor’s Note: We have been suffering with killer heat in Los Angeles for the past four days, which sent me on a search for poetry about surviving the heat. Couldn’t resist posting “Fat Southern Men in Their Summer Suits.” I must add that I’ve spent a lot of time in South during various summers, and — at least for me — the heat in the Southern states can’t match anything in Southern California. One more thing…a nod to those Southern gentlemen who suffer through the heat in their seersucker suits — your gallantry has not gone unappreciated.