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, November 1, 2011

HANDWRITTEN



The typewriter is now obsolete, and who actually writes with paper and ink anymore?   This poem was generated by the dozens of letters written by my great-grandmother to my grandmother, most of them during the depression, when she taught Latin and handwriting.  They came to light after my father's death.   I remember the sheer curtains above the writing desk.  Scattered sheets of paper.  Thanks to Magpie Tales for reminding me.



Correspondence            


A teacher of grammar and penmanship,
she saved her letters
in  chifforobe drawers or stacked
on the floor of her closet.
They lie even now where she left them.
Every last one of them answered.

I’d watch her bend over her desk,
words streaming onto the  ivory vellum
like blue tributaries,
and sometimes, when she left awhile
to tend gumbo that boile d on the stove
or fold linens she scooped from the clothesline,
I touched those rose-scented sheets

and tried to imagine I lifted
their seamless meander of words
from the envelope.

When I complained over school compositions,
that I could find none of my own words
for such disagreeable assignments,
she would say, Just pick a word
and then wait.
Like a leaf spinning
round in a backwater,
sooner or later it catches the current.

Her last letters never got mailed.
When I read them,
her perfect blue words drift away
on a tide of forgetfulness,
as if she lived out her days underwater.

A  few now and then break
the surface,
names of  roses
she still pruned
and watered. King’s Ransom.
Joseph’s Coat.
Queen Elizabeth.

Not  debris,
as a rescue team scanning the waste
might describe them,

but more like the named
things themselves,
as if she’d thrown them
one by one,
into the wake
of her vanishing.

from Catching Light, LSU Press



5 comments:

Vicki Lane said...

Oh, that takes my breath away! I treasure letters and have saved bundles of them.

Your header photo is gorgeous!

Novice Naturalist said...

I like this poem very much. And what wonderful writing advice--pick a word and wait. I still write and receive letters regularly from a couple of correspondents. What a treasure letters are. Thanks for sharing this lovely poem.

Roy Schulze said...

Lovely poem. I particularly like your grandmother's advice: "Just pick a word/and then wait." My Magpie this week is Poet.

Tess Kincaid said...

Oh, this is nice...I adore the word "chifforobe"...the first time I heard it was in "To Kill a Mockingbird".

Novice Naturalist said...

Hi Kay,
Saw your comment on Novice Naturalist. I always read your blog, though I am just realizing that I don't have the Mountain Woman blog in my Reader. This is Jay. I have been 'back home' in Rabun County since August. I hope to see you at a poetry reading event in the before too long. Best to you and yours.