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.




Thursday, April 22, 2010

POET OF THE DAY: PENELOPE SCAMBLY SCHOTT

I met Penelope Scambly Schott over 30 years ago at the same conference where I met Isabel Zuber. She was a Jersey girl, and I was a rural mountain girl by way of S. Georgia. Despite our regional differences, (or maybe because of them?) we became good friends and have stayed in touch ever since. Last summer I spent a glorious week with her in Portland, Oregon, where we collaborated on our chapbook Aretha's Hat. More about that later. The poem below is from her new book.


(Penelope and Lilly)


Incidental Music for the 6:00 pm News

by Penelope Scambly Schott


Cowbells collect the evening. We are pulled

to the bare kitchen bulb like large moths,

while milking-shed cats curl into straw.


At a rosewood table in a paneled room

middle-aged men in wide leather chairs

sip twenty-year-old single-malt scotch.


Under the white kitchen light

clover honey melts into biscuits;

nobody is starving; nobody weeps.PO


The men in their nail-studded armchairs

caress their knuckles and nod their chins,

quite certain they have never been wrong.


The chorus of cowbells ka-bong rattle-rattle,

the chorus of crystal shot glasses set down,

chorus of moths beating powdered wings,


while out by the bins behind the Club

a woman who stole one sharpened pencil

is carving this song into her skin.


Penelope Scambly Schott is the author of a novel, six previous poetry books, and five chapbooks. Her poetry books include three historical verse narratives, Penelope: The Story of the Half-Scalped Woman, The Pest Maiden: A Story of Lobotomy, and A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth (Oregon Book Award for Poetry, 2008), as well as three lyric collections, The Perfect Mother (Violet Reed Hass Prize, 1994), Baiting the Void (Orphic Prize, 2005), and May the Generations Die in the Right Order. She has received four fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts and residencies at The Fine Arts Work Center, The Vermont Studio Center, and the Wurlitzer Foundation. Penelope lives in Portland, Oregon where she hikes, grades papers, paints, and spoils her family, especially her dog, Lily Schott Sweetdog.

Congratulations to Penelope, winner of the 2009 Sarah Lantz Memorial Poetry Book Prize from CALYX.

3 comments:

Vicki Lane said...

Wow, what a closing!

I know Penelope's work from y'all's ARETHA'S HAT and it's neat, the way your pieces complement one another.

Lyn said...

I totally fell into this poem..the men who were never wrong..hmmm, I know them!
Thank you...

Mike said...

Wow. I love this. Very powerful, and gracefully achieved. I'm a fan.