Red Dirt Chiasm: is Emmy Lou Harris a Ring Writer?

Hope the title isn't too kitschy, but this is one of those quick posts for me of places where the line between exegesis and eisogesis is hard to discern for me, hence the question mark. It could be that I am reading this in and unnaturally stretching the material to make it fit, or it could be that I am accurate in seeing it there but that it is not consciously intentional on her part because chiasm is so hardwired into the human brain that it happens naturally with a good writer, or it could be that Harris is educated on this type of thing and does it intentionally. Whatever that case may be, I am going to argue that it is there.

So, for some reason, a line from the title track of Emmy Lou Harris's Red Dirt Girl album popped into my head, and so I looked up the lyrics to see if I was remembering it correctly. First of all ... man, can that woman write. Back when the ubran cowboy thing had just come out and her record company was pushing her to join the movement, she basically said "get bent" by her next album being entirely old time gospel (Angel Band), and ever since, when Nashville has been exemplifying Bo Burnham's mock country song (I loved Johnny Cash's and American Record's Billboard magazine full-page "salute" to the Nashville establishment when he won the grammy for best album in 1996 for Unchained), she has been been writing real stuff like Wrecking Ball, Red Dirt Girl, and Stumble into Grace.

So, here are the lyrics:

[Stanza 1: A]
Me and my best friend Lillian
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon,
Sittin on the front porch cooling in the shade
Singin every song the radio played
Waitin for the Alabama sun to go down
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town
Me and Lillian
Just across the line and a little southeast of Meridian.

[Stanza 2: B]
She loved her brother I remember back when
He was fixin up a '49 Indian
He told her 'Little sister, gonna ride the wind
Up around the moon and back again"
He never got farther than Vietnam,
I was standin there with her when the telegram come
For Lillian.
Now he's lyin somewhere about a million miles from Meridian.

[Stanza 3: C]
She said there's not much hope for a red dirt girl
Somewhere out there is a great big world
That's where I'm bound
And the stars might fall on Alabama
But one of these days I'm gonna swing
My hammer down
Away from this red dirt town
I'm gonna make a joyful sound

[Stanza 4: D]
She grew up tall and she grew up thin
Buried that old dog Gideon
By a crepe myrtle bush in the back of the yard,
Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard
Got in trouble with a boy from town
Figured that she might as well settle down
So she dug right in
Across a red dirt line just a little south east from Meridian

[Stanza 5: C1]
She tried hard to love him but it never did take
It was just another way for the heart to break
So she dug right in.
But one thing they don't tell you about the blues
When you got em
You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom
There ain't know end.
At least not for Lillian

[Stanza 6: B1]
Nobody knows when she started her skid,
She was only twenty seven and she had five kids.
Coulda' been the whiskey,
Coulda been the pills,
Coulda been the dream she was trying to kill.
But there won't be a mention in the news of the world
About the life and the death of a red dirt girl
Named Lillian
Who never got any farther across the line than Meridian.

[Stanza 7: A1]
Now the stars still fall on Alabama
Tonight she finally laid
That hammer down
Without a sound
In the red dirt ground

Chiastic analysis:
The turn of the story is in stanza 4 (D) , the choice to "dig right in." A and A1 are the openings and closings in Alabama. In A, we meet Gideon, and in D, the crux, Gideon dies as a foreshadow of the statement of Lilian's death in A1: "Tonight she finally laid that hammer down." In C, we have the statement of the dream ("away from this red dirt town, gonna make a joyful sound"), and in C1 we have the statement of the death of a replacement dream ("tried hard to love him but it never did take," which is "just another way for the heart to break" ... the first having been the death of the beyond-Meridian dream of C). In B and B1, we have what I call the bipolar fates: The dream was to get beyond Meridian to someplace interesting ("up around the moon and back again"), but she never made it out at all ("who never got further across the line than Meridian" in B1) and he got too far ("Now he's lyin' somewhere about a million miles from Meridian," Vietnam, in B) ... that nice, happy Greek "golden mean" of seeing the sites and living someplace interesting but still being able to visit the old place, that dream of American suburbia (just the right mix of the rural and the cosmopolitan), that Anglican via media, just isn't possible for some of us: either we make it nowhere at all or we make it too far (and sometimes we do both ... but never the middle ground). And several of the key phrases from the progression pay off again in the A1 finale: the stars falling on Alabama, laying the hammer down (a nice John Henry reference too), the dream/lack of sound. Amazing song (the whole album is good too, most especially "Bang the Drum Slowly").