I HAVE COFFEE WITH THE POETS

Imagine walking into a bookstore like this one. It's a gray February day, with storms threatening, and you've just driven in the rain from Cullowhee over Winding Stair Gap and down into the town of Hayesville. You find the town square and park in front of a place called Crumpets, also known as Phillips & Lloyd bookstore. You're early. You sit in the car waiting for the doors to open, and when they do, you enter the store where you see one of the most welcoming interiors you've beheld in quite awhile.



But wait! It gets better. There's your old friend Nancy Simpson waiting to give you a hug. You are, after all, the special guest today, the poet who drove into the clouds and down again to get here for a morning of poetry.



Here are Brenda Kay Ledford and Carole Thompson waiting to say hello.



There's fresh coffee waiting, and oh my, all sorts of goodies being spread on a table in the room where ruffled curtains and quilts adorn the windows and walls. Soon other friends from Netwest arrive--Glenda Beall, Brenda Kay Ledford, and a little later, Janice Townley Moore, to name only a few. It's COFFEE WITH THE POETS morning. Wake up, wake up, the poets all around me seem to be saying, and after my reading and question/answer session, I listen to them read their own work in the open mic portion of this monthly event sponsored by Netwest.




(Michelle Keller, who coordinates Netwest's COFFEE WITH THE POETS, introduces me before my reading.)

Janice Moore sits to the side listening.



One by one the poets read their poems. "I want these," I declare, grabbing pages out of each poet's hand, and I carry them back home with me over the mountain. When I get home I realize I can't possibly type all of these for my blog! So, out comes my trusty digital camera, and I photograph each poem. Aha, the real thing, preserved by modern technology. Even the wrinkles in the paper.

Brenda Kay Ledford in her red-hot leather suit leads off the list.





Richard Argo flashes a big smile after reading his poem about being in a tent during rain. (I remember tent days--and nights---but mine weren't so romantic.)





Idell Shook introduces me to her book, Rivers of My Heart.





And Clarence Newton! What else to say about his "Adventure"?






One of the highlights of my day is meeting Lynn Rutherford, whose comments on this blog have delighted me over the past months. A Georgia girl herself, she knows about muddy rivers, squishy mud, sandspurs, and mosquitoes!








Nancy Simpson reads an old poem made new again through revision and recently accepted by The Pisgah Review.



Carole Thompson's poem set in St. Simon's Island, shows her gift for vivid imagery. It made me want to head south to the Golden Isles, where my favorite beaches wait.




Glenda Barrett, who lives just over the state line, promised to email me some of her poems. Here is one of them. Glenda is a widely published poet, with a recent chapbook to her credit. (more about that in a later post)




Flashback


The massage therapist

moves her slick palms

up and down my leg muscles

and notices a scar on my ankle.

Did you know every cell

in our body has a memory?

Experts say that simply touching

a scar can bring back the memory

of the trauma.

I listen as she speaks,

but I’m secretly glad

no one can touch my heart.

------------Glenda Barrett

Published in The Cherry Blossom Review in summer of 2008


If you are looking for crafty wit, look no further than Dorothea Spiegel's "X ON."





And Linda Smith's voice was well-suited to the "mystery" she unfolded in her poem "Mystery Memory."






Karen Holmes read a memorable poem about the circles life makes.





And after the open mic, we made our way to the delicacies arranged on the table. Poetry makes you hungry, after all. And COFFEE WITH THE POETS will make you hungry for more such mornings when friends and lovers of poetry gather to celebrate and enjoy the magic of each and every poem.