NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: THANK YOU, MARY REGAN

National Poetry Month, Day 4

For the past few days I've been celebrating National Poetry Month by posting poems by individual poets, and I hope my readers have enjoyed reading their work.  Today I'm celebrating a woman who is not a poet, who in fact is not really an artist in any genre, except one crucial one, ENABLER OF ARTISTS.  When I moved to western North Carolina in the late 60's, the presence of the arts here in the far reaches of the mountains was limited, to say the least.  If you were a writer, the Mecca for you would have been the Chapel Hill/Durham area.  That's where the arts lived, where the monetary support resided.  Or so we believed, my writer friends and I.  We felt isolated, unappreciated.

That didn't last.  Over the years, thanks to the NC Arts Council and Mary Regan, support for the arts blossomed state-wide.  For writers, she, and her able Literature Director Debbie McGill,  became eloquent and energetic supporters of our work, our ambitions, our search for an audience.

Mary Regan recently retired, after so many fruitful years of guiding the State of the Arts.  Below, I give you a poem I wrote for Mary, read by Chuck Sullivan at Mary's retirement celebration at the end of February.  

  Mary and the Muses

on the occasion of Mary Regan's retirement  as Director of the North Carolina Arts Council

Those classical muses get way too much credit.

We artists in North Carolina don’t need them.

We’ve had our own Muse

whose name we can always pronounce.

No Terspsichore,  Euterpe, Melpomen

or Polyhymnia.  We call her Mary,

a good enough classical name

for a woman who’s nurtured

the arts, every one of them,

here in our state, from the mountains

to sea, from the cabin

to lighthouse, from canvas to

keyboard and back again.

Once I strained to hit a high C 

in voice lessons. I tried to play Bach 

and banged the wrong notes,

I teetered en pointe

and gave up, though I cherished,

and still do, my blue satin tutu.

My art teacher urged me to cherish

my inner Picasso,

but by then, I had fallen in love

with poetry.  Thank goodness,

I moved to North Carolina

where Mary was waiting to help me

become what I wanted to be.

My own voice singing my own woman’s story.

We don’t need a team of Greek Muses,

doggedly dancing around

on some vases and frescoes.

We’ve had Mary all these years

clearing the way for us

as any Muse worth her name would do,

 the Tenth Muse,

as the Bard himself might have called her,

..ten times more in worth

Than those old nine which rhymers invocate.*

Salud, Mary! Thank you, muchas gracias, 

and merci beaucoup,

for all you have given this state.

  

                                                      *from Sonnet 38