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.




Friday, December 31, 2010

Campbell Folk School Offers Poetry/Prose Workshop with Karen Paul Holmes.


Karen Holmes, one of WNC's up and coming poets, is offering a workshop at Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, one of the loveliest places on the planet. Karen is also a prose writer and a web designer. She knows her material! You can find her on facebook, by the way.

The class is an all-genre writing class and here are the details, following the Monet water lilies, which just may inspire you to begin writing, even before you sign up for Karen's class.


January 30- Feb 5, John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC
"Sing and Paint with Words"
This is a writing class for poets and prose writers where we will look to the other arts for ideas and inspiration. In other words, we'll "call all muses" to help us write. We'll listen to music, look at art and share great lines of authors and poets. We'll have plenty of class time to write and prompts to get us started. You might decide, for example, to write about what you hear in a piece of music or how it made you feel. You might even decide to create a character in a short story or poem who plays the violin or paints like Monet. Or you might simply get a burst of creativity to finish a project or start a new one. The week will include tips on editing to make your work the best it can be and one-on-one coaching sessions. What a great way to kick start your New Year's writing resolution.

For more information and to register, call the Folk School today 1-800-FOLK-SCH or visit www.folkschool.org
The class is wide open, so a "local resident" 50% discount on tuition ($276) will apply if you live in one of the qualifying "local" counties.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

SIBA 201O BOOK AWARDS NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN!

(CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE IN SYLVA, NC)

TO ALL MY BLOG READERS WHO VALUE SOUTHERN LITERATURE, ESPECIALLY POETRY, PLEASE CONSIDER NOMINATING BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 2010 THAT YOU LOVE. HERE'S THE LINK: http://www.sibaweb.com/siba-book-award/nomination-form. Readers may nominate books if they list a SIBA member as their bookstore. SIBA IS THE SOUTHERN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS ALLIANCE. THEY ARE AN IMPORTANT RESOURCE IN A CULTURE THAT IS RAPIDLY MOVING TOWARD CHAIN BOOKSELLERS AND THE INTERNET. PLEASE HELP SUPPORT OUR INDIE BOOKSTORES.
POETRY WAS DROPPED FROM THE AWARDS LAST YEAR BECAUSE OF SO FEW NOMINATIONS. LET'S CHANGE THAT THIS YEAR!
This a quick list of books I value and think deserve to be honored. There are others I've not listed. We've a wealth of good poetry being published now. Let's celebrate it.
-----------------------------------
Nancy Simpson: Living Above the Frost Line (Carolina Wren)
Isabel Zuber: Red Lily (Press 53)
Joseph Bathanti: Restoring Sacred Art (Star Cloud Press)
Jeffery Beam: Gospel Earth (Skysill Press)
Nancy Dillingham: Home
Janisse Ray: A House of Branches (Wind Pub.)
John Thomas York: Naming the Constellations (Spring Street Editions)
Dede Wilson: Eliza (Main Street Rag)
Stephen Smith: A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths (Main St. Rag)
Tara Powell: Physical Science (Finishing Line)
Debra Kaufman: The Next Moment (Jacar)
Julia Nunnally Duncan: At Dusk (Old Seventy Creek Press)
Alex Grant: The Circus Poems (Lorimer)
Holly Iglesias: Angles of Approach (White Pine)
Cathy Smith Bowers: Like Shining from Shook Foil (Press 53)
Ruth Moose: Tea (Main Street)


Tuesday, December 28, 2010

ALHAMBRA 2011 POETRY CALENDAR IS HERE!

THE 2011 ALHAMBRA POET CALENDAR IS HERE! BOTH DAILY CALENDAR AND POETRY ANTHOLOGY, IT SITS ATOP DESK, KITCHEN COUNTER, MICROWAVE, BEDSIDE TABLE, OR ANY FLAT SURFACE, WAITING TO BE READ. ORDER NOW FROM http://www.alhambrapublishing.com/htm/EPC11.html. NORTH CAROLINA POETS INCLUDE ISABEL ZUBER, JOHN HOPPENTHALER, SARAH LINDSAY, CATHERINE CARTER, RHETT ISEMAN TRULL, among others.


The is the poem of mine included in the calendar. It first appeared in CLOTHESLINES, edited by Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham.



Rivershawl


She’d dribble the fringe of her shawl

in the river. The quick current rippled the black threads.

They floated as she wished she could.

They wanted to be swept away but she held fast

to what had been woven. Her mother’s shawl.

Now her own. How much longer

to be handed down, this black keepsake?


She d lift out the fringe,

rub it over her face, feel the cold

water run down her cheeks,

down her neck,

into white folds of flesh underneath the dress

worn before her by her kinswomen.


What might she catch in this web

if she let it drift far enough

out of the shallows,

into the dark center

where she could not see the bottom?


How far would she have to wade

until she stepped into

some other world, under the sun-dappled

surface? The river itself was a shawl,

always wrapping itself round the hills,

threaded with golden light,

trailing its castaway leaves.


It could weave her into its weft,

carry her farther than she could imagine--

the sea she could feel surging

inside when she let herself

want what she knew she could not

have, a life she could open

as wide as a closet door onto

garments no woman had worn

before her. Nobody’s life but her own.



Sunday, December 26, 2010

THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS


Another poem from the NC Arts Council's Christmas Garland of 3 years ago. (www.ncarts.org)


The Day after Christmas


by Kathryn Stripling Byer


Scent of ashes
from the hearth.

Tattered colors
strewn like rainbows

on the the rug.
The drip

drip of snow melt
from the eaves

and underneath
the tree an emptiness

that means
our lives are full

with gifts just opened,
gathered now into our keeping

for another year
of longing toward the peace

that passes
every day's misunderstandings.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

INSIDE CHRISTMAS DAY


An oldish poem that I remembered today while watching our dogs cavort in the snow.


Inside Christmas Day
by Kathryn Stripling Byer

If Dog is Love,
as the bumper stickers say,
then Love is playing in the snow today,
her long nose white
as whipping cream I'll beat
into sweet snow drifts for pumpkin pie
that's cooling on the countertop.
I watch my Dog's shenanigans,
from my place among the pots and pans.
The turkey's sizzling,
green beans simmering,
cinnamon and clove scent
rising from the potpourri
while all around us,
Dog and me,
this Christmas day
hangs, shimmering.


(NC Arts Council website)

Thursday, December 23, 2010

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Julia Nunnally Duncan's AT DUSK

One of the great pleasures of being a writer in North Carolina is the literary community that helps introduce us to each other. I've known Julia Nunnally Duncan for many years, discovering her work while a reader for Appalachian Consortium Press. That discovery was Blue Ridge Shadows, a collection of short stories. I was so impressed that I contacted her, after which we became literary "sisters," so to speak. Julia has studied with Lee Smith, among others, and has published several collections of fiction. Her poetry, however, is what I'm celebrating today--her second collection of poems titled AT DUSK. Several of the first poems in the book seem appropriate for this time of year, especially the one about a wood stove! This would make a good winter-time gift for yourself or one of the readers on your holiday list.




(Julia Nunnally Duncan at Malaprop's Bookstore last December, after a reading with Cecilia Woloch and me. She read poems from her recently published book, below. )

Please order from Old Seventy Creek Press at http://oldseventycreekpress.books.officelive.com/Julia.aspx. This small press is located in Albany, Kentucky.


Utensils


I polish the utensils

one at a time—

knives, forks, and spoons

emptied today

from my mother’s kitchen drawer.


Forgotten fork, long-pronged

and mismatched;

I didn’t want it put

beside my supper plate.

What difference does it make?

my mother asked through the years,

but I still refused to lift it to my mouth,

sure that it would taint

the taste of the food.


Floral-patterned stainless steel implements,

bought through the decades

at the Roses Five and Dime;

and tarnished silver plate pieces

that were saved from my grandmother’s set

or unearthed when the garden was plowed—

all have waited to be caressed by me.


I finger the years

with a cotton cloth:

clean, rinse, and polish,

till I conjure my inverted image

in the spoons’ embrace.



Wood Stove


In my mother’s kitchen

I sit near the wood stove,

shying away from other cold rooms.

Here she bakes biscuits

and boils pinto beans

and dries her hair

at the opened oven door.

In my early childhood

before the luxury

of a finished bathroom,

I took my baths at the wood stove:

buckets full of cold water,

kettles full of hot

that steamed as she poured them

into a galvanized tub,

the water cooling too soon

in the shadows of a winter evening.


It seems I am always drawn back

to this embrace of heat;

and as the pine wood hisses

and embers glow,

frost lacing the windows early tonight,

I sit at the wood stove,

close my eyes,

and enjoy.






Volare


In some woman’s Ford—

I can’t remember exactly whose—

I slouched in the hot back seat

and nibbled warm Swiss cheese from a grocery bag—

too hungry to wait for dinner.

My mother and the driver sat up front talking

while the radio blared Volare.


Now—

forty-five years later—

when I hear that song,

I taste the waxy blandness of Swiss cheese

and feel the heat of a summer day.

I am a child again,

set apart in a stifling back seat,

hungry,

impatient to get home,

bored with the unintelligible

talk of women.



Roadside Stable


The Appaloosa gelding at the roadside stable,

where a tourist could get a trail ride for two dollars,

was too weary to care where the trail guide led us

and too bored to buck when I nudged with my heels

its bony sides.

I thought to canter would be impressive

to the acne-scarred boy who led us into the woods

on his buckskin mare.

But he never noticed my posting,

or the new black boots I wore,

or the riding crop I’d gotten at Sears—

my English style so wrong for my Western mount.

The guide wanted only to get us back

to the dusty gravel parking lot,

where my father and mother waited,

impatient to drive on to Cherokee.











Wednesday, December 22, 2010

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Stephen E. Smith's A SHORT REPORT ON THE FIRE AT WOOLWORTHS

My friend Stephen Smith has published his Selected New and Old Poems, titled A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths, with Main Street Rag Press in Charlotte, NC. I'm happy to hear about this new book; Stephen is a poet whose work I've admired over the years. He's also been a mainstay of our state's literary community. Here are several poems from the book.
I'm hoping you'll want to order this one after you come to the end of this blog post!

ISBN: 978-1-59948-257-6
118 pages, $14


Stephen E. Smith was born in Easton, Maryland, in 1946. After graduating from Elon College, he attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he received his MFA in 1971. His poems, stories, columns, and reviews have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies. He is the author of seven previous books of poetry and prose and is the recipient the Poetry Northwest Young Poet's Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry, and four North Carolina Press awards. He lives in Southern Pines, North Carolina and contributes columns, reviews, and features toThe Pilot and PineStraw magazine.


Whatever There Was To Say


A sky the pallor of hands folded in a casket


You are driving south on Church Street this November

afternoon, and as you approach a railway crossing,

you notice a family, or what you believe

to be a family, walking the road—a man, a woman,

a boy, and a small girl, who is maybe eight.

The girl wears a blue print dress and is barefoot

in this late chill. And because the sky is the gray

of your grandmother’s hands, you recall how that

old woman embraced you years ago as you sat in the

Avalon Theatre watching the movie news, the face

of a shivering child, a girl about the age of this

small girl, waiting beside a death camp railway.

Your grandmother put her arms around you there in

the darkness and you were embarrassed, felt awkward:

an old woman clinging to you, a child of eight,

in a crowded theatre. But your grandmother is a long

time dead and you have come to understand that shoeless

children are, these days, simply shoeless children:

you’ve seen so many and so much worse.


Yet there is something about this family,

this child, her straight yellow hair cut

at such a ragged angle, the thin face, eyes set

deep in shadow. And her brother in a green cap,

her father, tight-waisted in blue trousers,

the mother in a heavy, white-flecked overcoat.

They carry plastic bags filled with aluminum cans

gathered from the roadsides and ditches. And haven’t

you seen these very faces in photographs of Jews,

Gypsies, Poles, eyes blank with resignation, fatigue,

awaiting the gas chamber, clutching their belongings—

as if those few scraps of cloth could be of some value

where they were going? You wonder about this family,

wonder if the future of this small girl is as clear

as the past in photographs. Wonder how these church

steeples dare to rise straight into the smoky skies

of this most terrible of centuries. How neatly they

weave themselves among the bare branches of oak and

sycamore! And haven’t you finally come to understand

that whatever there was to say cannot be said?

Which is probably what your grandmother was telling

you in the darkness of that long ago matinee

when she held you hard against her as you watched

that child shivering beside the death camp railway.

Remember how you tried to pull away and how she held

on tight, as if that simple, desperate gesture

might make any difference in such a world?



The Poet’s Photograph


When I see a poet’s photograph with the name

of the photographer printed below in tiny letters,

why do I believe that the poet and the photographer

were once lovers? It is a ridiculous assumption.

Maybe the poet paid to have his photograph taken,

though I know this is seldom the case, or perhaps

the photographer was a faithful admirer of poets

and poetry, pleased to have been included in some

discreet yet significant way. And why when the poet’s

wife snapped the shutter, do I believe they haven’t

been lovers in decades, a more likely assumption?


And what of the photograph of the poet reading,

lean body bent over the lectern, his left hand

grasping air, his face drawn with intensity,

how is it I know he went home with the photographer,

an attractive widow whose dead husband was

a kindly but obscure botanist who toppled one

spring morning into a variety of pinkish day lily

which bore his name, that after the cocktail party

she invited the poet to see her collection of rare

paraphernalia and that they tossed back a couple

of bourbons and tumbled straight away into the sack

where the poet recited Donne’s “Love’s Progresse”

and kissed gently her plump toes?


I’m sure it was raining that October night,

a warm panging on the tin roof, the lingering

scent of cinnamon air freshener, a blue neon light

flashing from the bar across the street, and that

in the morning they were both embarrassed, the poet

taking his leave somewhat awkwardly, and that he

never thought of the widow again until he opened a

letter forwarded to him in Greece where he was

languishing sans inspiration: Came across this

photograph—can it be so many years?—and thought

you might like it. I am married now to a botanist,

a kindly man who cannot make love because of recurrent

atrial fibrillation. Will you be reading in this area soon?

And the poet studied the photograph of someone

who seemed a stranger and thought: the perfect

likeness for my next book.








Loose Talk


An article in this morning’s Observer,

like other articles I’ve chance to read

on the life of Jane Mansfield,

notes that she was decapitated

when the car in which she was riding

crashed into a truck north of New Orleans.

This is what everyone who recalls

the buxom blonde remembers immediately—

like the neighbor who can tell you

that Walt Whitman was a homosexual

or that Catherine the Great

was a nymphomaniac who practiced bestiality.


The publicity photograph which

accompanies this article is not true to fact

or life: Mansfield is a brunette, smiling

a thick-lipped Monroe smile and thrusting

her breasts into the camera lens.

What would she have us believe—lover,

innocent, earthmother? In a faded tintype,

Whitman has gathered children about him.

He is affectionate, tender, ingenuous,

passionate, but certainly unaware of the

prurient obsessions which will one day

distort his finest lines. And who is

to say for sure that Catherine the Great

had a thousand lovers and left a poor

aroused pony dangling from the palace ceiling?


I wonder about the bewildered

man who came across a headless Jane Mansfield

on a highway north of New Orleans.

Did he recall the yellowing issue of Playboy

that lay creased beneath his mattress?

Could he see, if only for an instant, her nude

body arching, nipples erect, lips pursed?

Did he wonder: Is this twitching flesh

the very same? Did he ever find

the simple words to speak a simple truth?













Cleaning Pools



To my father


That summer you hired out to clean swimming pools

up and down Delmarva in your Willys truck,

the back end clanking with pumps and pipes,

cans of HTH, diatomaceous earth and alum,

and hauled me along to skim from the chlorined

waters hopeless, deluded toads and the clotted

bodies of insects.


I was ten that summer but can remember

how the surface of each pool was a surprise,

the water still clear or gone cloudy,

the blue bottoms flecked with algae

and the shimmering coins I retrieved for baloney

sandwiches and sodas at the Royal Oak Grocery.

You’d place a hand on my shoulder and say,

“Dive deep and get us that lunch money.”


Do you recall the August afternoon at the Talbot

County Country Club, the thirty-six filter bags

we pulled and laundered, the steel rings so tight

our fingers bled? It was a five-hour job

and when the bags and screens were back in place,

you dropped a pipe wrench clanging to the bottom.


It was five more hours in the high beams

and neither of us spoke till the filter

lid was clamped and screwed down tight.

Then we leaned against the truck and shared

a warm soda. Sheet lightning streaked

over the Chesapeake, and I began to notice

how after each flash, I went momentarily blind.

“It’s strange,” you said, finally, and without

my having spoken a word, “how quickly the pupil

closes to the light and how complete the darkness is.

It must be like dying.”


Tonight I watch a storm gather over Carolina,

the lightning so intense the billowing undersides

of clouds are illumined from horizon to horizon,

each flash stealing me into shadow. Perhaps,

as you said, it is like death, this sudden light

and inevitable darkness. Or perhaps it is the

purest grace. It says what fathers and sons

mostly cannot say: It is the quick chill of a hand

on my shoulder, it’s like plunging deep

into the pure, blue waters of the rich.



Monday, December 20, 2010

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Dede Wilson's "Eliza"

Dede Wilson has been a good friend for many years. I first discovered her work in the chapbook Glass, written after the death of her daughter in a car accident. I've followed her poetry ever since. Her innate elegance, sensibility, and wit shine through in all her poetry. Eliza: The New Orleans Years shows her voice in fine lyrical form, the persona of Eliza speaking across the centuries.

Eliza may be ordered from Main Street Rag Press.

ELIZA

The New Orleans Years
1837-1862
Dede Wilson

ISBN: 978-1-59948-259-0, ~80 pages, $14




About the Author



Dede Wilson is the author of three books of poems: Glass, Sea of Small Fears, and One Nightstand, a collection of light verse in forms followed by a primer to poetic form. Four poems from Eliza: The New Orleans Years were published in Nimrod as finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize, and the poem "Yellow Fever," published as "Hydra," was nominated for a Pushcart. Her poems have appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poet Lore, New Orleans Poetry Review, Poem, Cream City Review, Tar River Poetry, Iodine Poetry Journal, Flyway, Southern Poetry Review, Cave Wall, South Carolina Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review, The Lyric, Light, and many other journals. She has published short stories, essays, and a family memoir, Fourth Child, Second Daughter. Dede is a former travel editor of the Dallas Times Herald. A native of Louisiana, she has lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, since 1967. She and her husband have two grown sons.

Foreword

Eliza Moore was born in London on August 8, 1819, the same year as Queen Victoria. Her parents were Sir Michael Moore, an Anglican minister, and his wife Elizabeth. After her father's untimely death, Eliza sailed with her mother and sisters, Maria and Louise, to New Orleans.

Caleb Alexander Parker, who had journeyed south from Sterling, Massachusetts, lived in New Orleans.

As the story begins, Eliza -- who has married an English sea captain -- is on board a packet ship nearing the port of New Orleans. It is late summer, 1837.





New Orleans



The smells are thicker than any in England:
coffee, sausages, sugared pecans. Flesh
too ripe, too perfumed. My own captain
unwashed. And me in sun-stained threads!
On the levee, a leper is begging.
Someone flips him a picayune. Enough,
I pray, for a dip of soup. I stumble
on rocks and cobbles, pitch through the streets.
Beg for my sisters. I saw Louise, I did,
peering back at me from a carriage.
That small bleached face. I cried to her, I ran…
my captain grabbed my sleeve. The sky is ringing
with heat and mosquitoes. I'm weak-kneed…trying
to breathe…Ah! Scents of camphor and sassafras…
that sweet reek of whisky reeling from doors.
The Vieux Carre. I sway against a wall.
He leads me by the wrist to a filthy street,
through a door, down an oily hall.


In the French Market



I walk as fast as I can, threading the stalls.
Acorn squash, late potatoes weigh my basket,
anything to roast on the grate. Yams. Cushaw.

He's here. I finger a sprig of sassafras.
That man…called Caleb. I am unreeling
beneath the surface, so deep I cannot breathe.

I grip my shawl. I'll leave. Yes. A girl glides by
with macaroons and nougat, oranges, candied
pecans. He sidles beside, drops a silver

into the marchande's hand, bows to me with figues
celestes, sweet figs from heaven. Anyone can
see. I do not turn. I stand. I eat. I feast.


Who Has Need of Hell?

-New Orleans, yellow fever epidemic, 1853



My lifeless child rocks at my breast. I swoon

toward a ditch, retch. Take one step, another,

into this fester of death. Black death. Black men

with black pots, black tar to smother the rot.

Whole families dead, no one surviving to care

for their bodies, to open their vaults. I pick

my way through the streets, my baby's body

wrapped in a shawl. Everywhere, bodies. Bodies

stiffening in doorways, on porches, slipping

off carts. The awful glitter of maggots. And

buzzards, buzzards pulling ropes of gore out

of a woman's bodice. There! That mulatto,

my seamstress––much too frail to be dragging

that body, that weight. Oh! our Pastor Clapp, two,

no, three small coffins falling from his cart.

Bell's Crevasse

-New Orleans,1858

He’s off again—with Maggie and Harrison—

to stare at Bell's crevasse. A break in the levee

with waters so swift, two grown men, horsing

around, have slipped in the rapids and drowned.

And there go my children, skipping along that

rain-slick levee, walking too close to the breach.

Look. I know. I've seen it. Last Sunday,

beside the river at Café du Monde, we watched

the water rising, spilling into Algiers.

The little ones sitting on Caleb's shoulders.

Me! Me! Now they're off to the Bell place,

Caleb grinning, silly with whiskey. They say

that fishermen are working the swirls, swelling

their nets. And small boats keep rowing closer

and closer. Men! Needing to risk a crevasse.

And what of this city? Pity this city

where whiskey moves quicker than rivers.

=



THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Joseph Bathanti's RESTORING SACRED ART

It's not too late to order books of poetry for holiday gifts. Even if they arrive after Christmas, there's always New Years Eve, right? A book of poetry, along with a bottle of champagne, would be the perfect way to begin 2011.

Joseph Bathanti's new book of poems, RESTORING SACRED ART, shows again how Bathanti's work continues to grow in power and resonance. This collection can be ordered from Star Cloud Press at http://www.starcloudpress.com/RestoringSacredArt.html. Below, two poems from the book wait to be savored.

ISBN: 978-1-932842-39-5 (cloth edition)
ISBN: 978-1-932842-40-1 (paperback edition)
Publisher: Star Cloud Press
Year of Publication: 2010
Format: Cloth Edition or Paperback
Page Count: 126 (paperback)



"Joseph Bathanti is a strong, eloquent voice in American poetry. His poems emanate from deep within himself and his culture, a world of rich ethnic ties and associations. I love the luminous details that he uncovers, again and again, like holy mysteries. His poems, which often deal — overtly and covertly — with religious themes, are restorative. These are, indeed, poems of restoration. Bathanti returns often to the well of memory, and he draws a fresh, sweet water from those depths."
—Jay Parini, The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems and Benjamin's Crossing


"I am enraptured by the poems in Restoring Sacred Art, Joseph Bathanti's volume of love/hate poems about growing up and contending with the physicality of Pittsburgh, that unforgettable city. The language is rich, metropolitan, and accomplished, resounding with the poet's deep memories of friendship, family, neighborhood, school agonies, old cars, Catholicism, games, fights, binges, discoveries, hard jobs, affections, memories of a place and time. The stories and lines are artfully constructed, building to the moving conclusion of the book, when the poet returns annually to visit his people and remember the city. He never stops saying goodbye."
—Paul Zimmer, Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems and Trains In the Distance



Author Joseph <span class=


JOSEPH BATHANTI is the author of five books of poetry:Communion Partners, Anson County, The Feast of All Saints, This Metal (nominated for the National Book Award), andLand of Amnesia. His first novel, East Liberty, won the 2001 Carolina Novel Award. His latest novel, Coventry, won the 2006 Novello Literary Award. His book of stories, The High Heart, won the 2006 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. He is the recipient of Literature Fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council in 1994 (poetry) and 2009 (fiction), the Sherwood Anderson Award, and many others. He teaches atAppalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.


Restoring Sacred Art



We ease the statue out of the Chrysler trunk.

Stiff as a mob hit, she smiles,

her tattered robe della robia,

the nimbus studded with a star tiara.

In her arms, the smirking Christ-

child is lean and grim, in one hand

a ball with a cross planted in it,

the other held up like a boy scout's pledge.


I grab his mother in a headlock.

Philip takes the feet;

and we shuffle down Liberty Avenue:

Saturday night, the bars' glass-brick

windows lit with neon Iron City Light beer signs,

one Italian joint after another,

the spars of Saint Joseph's Cathedral shooting off

into the sky like wild onions.


We set her down for a minute at the foot

of Phil's studio and light cigarettes.

Four flights, fifteen steps each, straight up.

She stands there on the sidewalk,

holding the baby, gazing at Saint Joe's,

The Catholic Store, Mineo's Pizza,

the halogens twirling off across

the Bloomfield Bridge toward the Bishop's house.


The kid doesn't like it: the thrum

and noise, the lights. He's lived

all his life in a church.

We hoist them again and begin the climb,

pausing at each landing to rest, and crack at Mary:

You've got to lose some weight.

Too many cannolis.

When are you going to start exercising?

We offer her a smoke.


At the top, we wrestle her inside.

Phil turns on the light.

The baby has lost those two fingers;

only the thumb remains,

jutting out of the fist like a hitchhiker's.

He wants down. In the full light,

Mary is wan, tired, the smile thinning.

She has trouble holding her son.

Her eyes are wet; her lips quiver.


This is not unusual, my friend tells me,

gesturing about his workroom

where other virgin mothers,

nicked and beat-up, missing limbs and noses,

awaiting restoration,

hold tightly to their squirming children,

trying to hush them, their tears

like gravel hitting the linoleum.





Domenico Giuseppe



Singled from the queue filing

through airport security,

my 90 year old father is fully cooperative,

even amiable; not even surprised, it seems,


that fate has tapped him on the shoulder

to answer for something he is innocent of.

Two uniformed buxom matrons,

coiled hair and black patent leather


Sam Browns, heart-shaped

silver badges, ask him

if he’s accepted anything from strangers

since he’s entered the terminal.


He assures them he never accepts things from strangers.

They study him as if his affability

is part of the ploy, a filament

wired to the bomb he’ll trigger.


They prod over him an electric wand,

slip him out of his overcoat, shake his cane.

He smiles and calls them young lady.

He’s ordered to remove his shoes,


a pair of white Addidas,

not a scuff upon them; and his hat,

an old brown fedora they flip over

and over and empty of its nothingness,


before patting him down like a convict,

armpits and crotch, sliding

their hands up and down his arms and legs,

each skeletal ridge and knob


as if by magic he might divide

and reveal the vault of Armageddon.

Suddenly my father is terrible as Isaiah.

Yet he remains smiling, even as they strip him,


tottering naked on bare yellow feet,

white hair smoking off his chest,

millwright’s legs tungsten blue,

from him emanating an audible tick.


Then they peel him out of his skin,

jackknife him open:

sprung, mis-spliced wires,

capped sockets, taped frays –


the mysterious circuitry of detonation.

Still they don’t find what they’re searching for,

and he can’t remember

where he’s hidden it.



Wheeling




Driving a girl whose father loathed me,

son of an Italian who labored on the open hearth,

I crossed in a borrowed green Comet

the PA line into Wheeling.


Eighteen was legal in West Virginia:

Marlboros and three-two beer at the Hilltop

on a street with whorehouses and a Jesuit college.

She was sixteen, a minor –


the true miners secreted in black sulphurous pockets

whispering beneath the tavern floor we sat upon.

The jukebox was loud and country;

it was easy to ignore the charge being laced under us.

My girl was drunk and singing along – Loretta Lynn,

Tammy Wynette – though she didn’t know the words,

the way folks mouth like speaking in tongues

when the spirit lays hold of them.


A smudge on her cheek,

second-hand coat, her blonde hair shone white –

in that light,

aged into a coal miner’s wife


or a steel worker’s

like my mother.

When the 4 to12 shift from Wheeling Pittsburgh

dragged in, I smelled asbestos

and baked ore, the vaporous green sizzle

of my father’s work fatigues.

I wanted to tell her all about her father;

I’d rip him to pieces, that bastard.


My dad was a brave man,

He climbed boom cranes with nothing but a span of leather

fastening him above the smokestacks

streaming twelve stories of fire into the firmament.


But I had no vocabulary to render his mythic toil.

I knew more about her dad:

his suits and office in downtown Pittsburgh,

his perfect diction and college education.


We hung around till Last Call,

then kissed against the fender until the lot emptied

and the Hilltop’s neon shingle sputtered out.

The Comet wouldn’t start.


I turned it over and over until I killed the battery,

till I couldn’t get a peep out of the horn

or the lights to flicker.

The mighty Ohio beat by.

Whelped in Pittsburgh,

it loops north, in defiance of gravity,

abruptly slices west, southering

into the fang of northern West Virginia


that impales the border

of Ohio and Pennsylvania –

like the long jagged neck of a busted bottle.

That’s where we stood clinging to each other,


stranded along the omniscient river –

where I still like to think of us –

before those miners, like escaped Purgatorians,

burst black and smoldering


through the bottom of our lives,

and she started to cry,

anticipating her father’s patrician wrath.

I thought of who I could call –


knowing there was only one man on earth

who would rise out of his exhausted sleep

at the sound of my voice,

like Lazarus, and come running.