POET OF THE DAY: Diana Pinckney

My friend Diana has a gorgeous new book out from Lorimer Press, located in Davidson, NC. If you are looking for some poetry to help you celebrate the greening up of our April world, this is it. Today is "Greening Up the Mountains," here in western North Carolina, so I have green, verde, vert on my mind!

Diana Pinckney is the award-winning author of three previous books of poetry. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, including Atlanta Review, Calyx, Cave Wall, Green Mountains Review, Kalliope, RHINO, Tar River Poetry. She is the 2010 winner of the Ekphrasis prize.

A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Pinckney has been a featured reader in the Sundown Series for the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival, The Blumenthal Writers and Readers Series, the Sensoria Literary Festival and the Charleston Public Library Literary Series. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina where she teaches poetry at the Cornwell Center.

THE MERMAID WONDERS
WHERE HER DAUGHTER GOES


Tall on this rock, she gives
me a See ya and dives

for longer and longer swims,
leaving me to wonder whose sails

spread before or under her
on those hard slick boats she loves.

Whose sand oozes
between her toes, sticks to her legs

after a throw-down with beach bums.

Total party hounds, she sneers

when I ask. Gives me an O.K. sure
or worse, a None’ ya biz when I warn.

Besides me, who waits for those white
arms rolling in the foam of midnight,

those bright streamers of hair tangled
with moonlight, lifted by a tide

that measures my days, that returns
each night, refusing to give up my daughter.



THE MERMAID’S DAUGHTER WONDERS
WHO HER MOTHER IS


I floated by in a basket?
Like wood storks bring babies out
of the marsh. Oh, please.
So she sang and played her flute,
combed my hair with coral and, whoa,
gave me manatee’s milk meant
for those fat pups
under mangrove roots, wrapped me
in greasy sealskins, yuck,
fed me fish roe – no way this was caviar –
tern eggs. Whatever.

Like how
did I end up with her?
Maybe some beach beauty
does a total meltdown at two a.m.,
can’t take the crying.
Who knows. Hello? No one
drops her baby in a grass basket –
wouldn’t that leak -- then shoves it out to sea.
Mothers don’t do that.
Do they?

POET OF THE DAY: ANTHONY S. ABBOTT

Tony Abbot has devoted much of his life to North Carolina's literary community, as well as to his own writing. A poet and a novelist, he is a master teacher, one who energizes his students, no matter their age. His New and Selected Poems appeared last year from Lorimer Press.

Anthony S. Abbott was born in San Francisco and educated at Fay School in Massachusetts and the Kent School in Connecticut. He received his A.B. from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, where he served as Department Chair from 1989 to 1996. His first novel, Leaving Maggie Hope was published in 2003 and received the Novello Literary Award and ForeWord Magazine’s Gold Award for literary fiction. It’s sequel, The Three Great Secret Things, was published in 2007. He is the author of five books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize nominated The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat. His most recent book New & Selected; Poems 1989 – 2009 was published in 2009 by Lorimer Press.

Tony is past President of the Charlotte Writers’ Club and the North Carolina Writers Network, and a past Chairman of the North Carolina Writers Conference. He currently serves as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society. He has been honored by St. Andrews College with the Sam Ragan Award for his writing and service to the literary community of North Carolina. In 2008, he was the North Carolina Writers Conference honoree, and received the Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts.

BLOOD RED OF LATE OCTOBER

Blood red of late October in the South,

and from the cemetery to the college campus

on the hill, the leaves bathe my eyes.

I turn each corner into dazzling surprise.

In my mind’s eye, she walks toward me.

I show her my favorite tree. I pluck three

leaves and watch as she carries

them away. This is new found grace,

and in the space where sadness once lay

the small white flower of hope grows.

In the South, October lingers, the gold

sun glances off the trees. November will

come with its cold rain soon enough,

I know. I turn the dazzle inward

and down. It courses through the veins

and lofts me toward the breathless light.