Welcome to where I am, where my kitchen's always messy, a pot's (or a poet) always about to boil over, a dog is always begging to be fed. Drafts of poems on the counter. Windows filled with leaves. Wind. Clouds moving over the mountains. If you like poetry, books, and music--especially dog howls when a siren unwinds down the hill-- you'll like it here.


MY NEW AUTHOR'S SITE, KATHRYNSTRIPLINGBYER.COM, THAT I MYSELF SET UP THROUGH WEEBLY.COM, IS NOW UP. I HAD FUN CREATING THIS SITE AND WOULD RECOMMEND WEEBLY.COM TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN SETTING UP A WEBSITE. I INVITE YOU TO VISIT MY NEW SITE TO KEEP UP WITH EVENTS RELATED TO MY NEW BOOK.


MY NC POET LAUREATE BLOG, MY LAUREATE'S LASSO, WILL REMAIN UP AS AN ARCHIVE OF NC POETS, GRADES K-INFINITY! I INVITE YOU TO VISIT WHEN YOU FEEL THE NEED TO READ SOME GOOD POEMS.

VISIT MY NEW BLOG, MOUNTAIN WOMAN, WHERE YOU WILL FIND UPDATES ON WHAT'S HAPPENING IN MY KITCHEN, IN THE ENVIRONMENT, IN MY IMAGINATION, IN MY GARDEN, AND AMONG MY MOUNTAIN WOMEN FRIENDS.




Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Tomatoes


My counter top is covered with tomatoes! Last year our crop succumbed to blight, but this year we have a glorious harvest. Two writers come to mind when I gather my tomatoes in the early morning--novelist Vicki Lane, whose recipes for preserving tomatoes--and her photos of them--can be found at vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com, and poet Becky Gould Gibson. I've taped Becky's poem "Tomato" to my fridge and have at this moment a batch of tomatoes in my oven, roasting according to Vicki's specifications. Here is Becky's poem, with left lines not aligned as they should be, thanks to my incompetence as a blogger. The poem should be rounded like a large plump, ripe tomato. My apologies, Becky!




(Becky Gould Gibson)

TOMATO

for my mother

Every July the same story
the same rumor runs through the market
tomatoes ready and ripening displayed on the tables
Early Girls, Better Boys in all their blemished perfection
For these, Atalanta would stop, give up her freedom
Tomato is text, drama, needs no exaggeration, heightening
a myth of the purely obvious, of nothing under the veil
A child sprawls in her grandmother’s garden, book in one hand
tomato in the other, eats as she reads, skin and all, the flesh
with the words. As juice runs down her eating arm onto
the spread pages, she knows she’ll never read only
for meaning, but always bite into language
a shaker of salt at her elbow
take it in whole.


This poem is from Becky Gould Gibson's Aphrodite's Daughter, recently published by Texas Review Press and winner of the 2006 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Becky has lived in Winston-Salem for many years. Her Needfire recently won the Brockman-Campbell award from the North Carolina Poetry Society.

5 comments:

Vicki Lane said...

What a delicious poem!

Susan M. Bell said...

Kathryn - If you go in to the post and edit it, you should be able to highlight that poem and click on the "center" alignment button. That may make it look the way you mentioned. I know it works in Microsoft Word, but with this blogging stuff, it's hard to tell sometimes. :)

Kathryn Magendie said...

Am stopping by to visit...it was wonderful hearing you read yesterday at Osondu's...

I am going to link this to my own MSN blog and website...

best, another Kathryn

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

HI Kathryn, hope you don't catch my cold! I had a good time yesterday, despite the sniffles. Thanks for the good words. Let's stay in touch. Kay

Anonymous said...

Love the poem-makes me want to go get a Tomato from the garden and eat it right now!