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.




Monday, May 31, 2010

MEMORIAL DAY


Precious Little

“... the passageway down which they had just gone was bright as the eye of a needle.”

Eudora Welty, Losing Battles



So we’d gathered to talk about writing,

remembering great ones who’d recently gone

from our midst and the various ways

they had followed each voice through


the needle’s eye into the clearing of art,

when a novelist slouched

on the front row opined

that the only real subject is battle


and how men survive it.

I seethed while my student poets,

all of them women, sat waiting for someone

to challenge his vision of literature,


belligerent canon

where warring tribes battle it out

in their epics and blood-spattered novels.

“Miss Welty,” I countered, “stayed


clear of the battlefield, if you recall.

She sat down every day at the same desk

and made language raise the world up

from the grave of our common amnesia.”

He barely acknowledged

my comment. He wanted to flirt.

with my students. He shrugged at me,

stood up and showed off the fit


of his tight jeans. My god,

what a chasm he opened up right there

between us: we stared like combatants

across the trench, loading our weapons,


his now on full frontal display,

along with a first novel already lobbed

to reviewers by Random House. As for me,

middle-aged poet, what were mine?


Precious little. The shot I recalled

having seen months ago of a woman my age

holding up to the camera a photo of daughter

or sister or good friend who’d disappeared


into the rubble of felled towers, the same woman

I had seen sifting through ruins in Fallujah

or Kabul, even now cringing

when she hears the gunfire in Baghdad,


a woman who stares back at me

when I’m dusting my daughter’s face

framed on the shelf,

smiling out at a day that’s been gone


for so long I can barely remember it,

nothing much going on, no bombs,

no fireworks, just late summer afternoon

and the dogs asleep under the oak tree.



(from COMING TO REST, LSU Press, 2005)

Thursday, May 13, 2010

THE GARDEN: an update

I simply couldn't resist going outside before lunch to take a few photos of our garden today, so here they are, beginning with the heroic cabbage!


"In my grandmother's garden grew cabbages

so big I dreamed they could fly...."


She grew mustard greens, too. She added them to her turnip greens pot. A memorable combination. She didn't grow lettuce, though. Or spinach. Or, horrors, broccoli! That would not have made my grandfather happy.

The mountain laurel is blooming now. And the iris!


Our spirits are alive again
That had been frozen in ennui.
Winter, say a short goodbye,
There's not one reason you should remain:
Summer has ordered his footmen in.

Fred Chappell, from Spring Garden: New & Selected Poems

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Magpie Tales 13: Gladiolas

THANK YOU TO ALL MY MAGPIE TALES FRIENDS, AS WELL AS OTHER VISITORS TO MY BLOG. I'LL BE TAKING A BREAK FROM THE BLOG OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS, I SO I WON'T BE ABLE TO GO BLOG-HOPPING. FAMILY OBLIGATIONS CALL, AS WELL AS A NEW MANUSCRIPT ON WHICH I'M WORKING. I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A LOVELY MAY!





Gladiolas



Or glads, as we called them,
their spikes shooting up every summer
in my grandmother’s garden.
Finally a wife with a small plot
of ground, I planted my own,
pushed the tubers down
deep. Wiped my hands on my jeans.
Waited two months. They bloomed.

Bending over their folds of magenta
and scarlet, I raked my left cornea
over the stub left behind by my scissors.
I stood with bouquet in arms, Oh,
this means nothing, nothing at all,

but the world had become blurred
and stayed that way. One week. Another,
until I was forced to admit I could not change

this other world no longer sharpened
by edges. It floated like what lies
beneath a pond’s surface. It shimmered.
The skin of my eye had been sheared
by the wound of a cut blossom,
liquid of Lorca’s doomed verde.
No help but to let the eye doctor
scrape off the crud of that old skin
and let the new grow back again.

Aren’t you glad, my eye blinked,
once the bandage came off,
that again you can see how
the stamens hang quivering,
the hand reaching out for the stalk?





This poem first appeared in Aretha's Hat: Inauguration Day 2009, Ash Creek, Press. For more about this publication, go to www.poemeleon.org. To order the chapbook, go to www.citylightsnc.com.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

ASHEVILLE WORDFEST 2010

(Laura Hope-Gill)
ASHEVILLE'S 3RD ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF POETRY BEGINS TODAY AND WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE REST OF THE WEEK. To see the schedule, please go to www.ashevillewordfest.org. Creator and guiding spirit of this festival is Laura Hope-Gill.
Poets reading this year are Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, Keith Flynn, Katherine Soniat, Holly Iglesias, John Hoppenthaler, Linda Hogan, NC's new Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers, and NC's old Poet Laureate, K.S. Byer, among others.
A lively group! Please plan to attend!

Sunday, May 2, 2010

MAGPIE TALES 12: i am


i am
such a tiny
movement
through stillness
around and
around
the incarnadine
mystery
raised from
the floor
of my fishbowl
through which
i look out
at your
world, tiny
self that
i am,
my gills opening
closing,
my small
supple spine
weaving ripples
nobody
can see