COLD SPRING RISING: John Thomas York

One of our state's best poets has had to be patient for many years before seeing his first full-length collection published.  This spring he was able to hold that book in his hands and celebrate.   Those of you who have followed this blog know that I've devoted several posts to John York's work, so type  his name into the poet's slot to the right of this new post to read more about his poetry.  Go to Press 53's website to order his book, read his biography, and learn more about the artist who created the cover image.


Today's GOOD NEWS is that John and his daughter Rachel will appear at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC this coming Saturday evening, Sept. 1, for a reading from the book and a performance of old ballads by Rachel.

  Drop by at 6:30 for this special event, have John sign some books for you, and stick around for a late supper downstairs at City Lights Cafe.   

Whippoorwill

The clear horizon was fading,

and my father and I sat together

on the warm steps,

cinder blocks painted smooth,

Daddy smelling of cows

and a cigarette, glowing, fading,

when it started, a song

both monotonous and magical,

as if God were plying

a hand pump, a musical 

machine that said, Make-it-Flow!

Make-it-Flow!  

Darkness rising from a deep well

and flooding the woods, the corn field.

I pointed, wanting a name:

“It’s just a whippoorwill, Johnny.

Just a bird, saying, Whippoorwill.”

Still the song rose from the dark,

a siren’s voice, sounding

the alarm for me and my father,

ignorant of any danger,

father-son sitting close on the warm steps

and watching the farm fading into the night.

The Gift

In the morning, getting ready for school, 

she would say, “Look at Mr. Redbird,

such a pretty, vain creature,”

the cardinal pecking at his reflection,

dancing back and forth in the sunlight

on the car’s big bumper.

And in the evening, after milking 

and dinner and the cleaning up, 

Mama sat on a bed 

with us and told stories, or she read

Johnny and His Mule, The Jack Tales,

a Bible story book.

I wanted to read, too,

but some words gave me trouble, 

so she used flash cards:

who. . .where. . .why.

She fed me words until they made

sentence, paragraph, story.

One day, the mailman left

a flat cardboard box, a book about whales,

the blue whale dwarfing

the man who stood beside it,

and fearsome orcas breached into the living

room and roamed over

the gray carpet, where sunlight

was striped by Venetian blinds: 

I turned off the TV for an hour and read 

my book, while my mother grinned 

to herself, as she cleared away her papers,

as she prepared the evening meal.

SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW: Kathryn Kirkpatrick

The current issue of Southern Poetry Review features, as always, memorable poems

 by some of our best poets, oftentimes friends of mine.  This issue includes several

 friends--Janice Townley Moore, Mike Chitwood,  Kathryn Kirkpatrick, and Julie Suk.  

Today I'm posting Kathryn's "Shine,"with a plug both for her most recent book, 

Unaccountable Weather (Press 53).   Tomorrow, I will post Julie Suk's poem.

Come back!

Shine

Saturdays as a child I spread newspaper
for forthright oxfords, coy high heels,
dabbed each scuff and toe with paste,
then smoothed, brushed, and buffed,
until each pair, restored, stood equal
to the world it was to meet, 

and myself lost in the motion,
mindful before I knew the practice,
cross-legged in a cove of spare delight,
attending, attending, as if the shoes
I mended walked their own meditation,
my child’s hand slipped toward each sole,
held up, inspected, admired until
the shine, the shine came true.

A dime a pair, repair the wear.
Stay against the sadness.
And I see him, my father,
with his small task to offer,
work his conversation, 
work his steady state.

All afternoon at the slow motion
of waxing a car with Turtle paste,
the circular hum, his way of saying
here is the stay, the raw delight, 
the feel of the task so surely done, 
it sounds a tuning in your bones.

The Goddesses: Athena

The goddesses stay with us, often keeping to the shadows until some event in our lives calls them forth, with their luminous mystery drawing us to them.   Here is Kathryn Kirkpatrick's invocation to Athena, from her new collection,  Unaccountable Weather, due this fall from Press 53.  The books can be pre-ordered from Press 53 right now.  

I finally met  Kathryn five years ago when I was Writer in Residence at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.  I felt I had met a soul-sister, and that sense of connection has not diminished with time.  I've read her new book with wonder, asking how she could weave such seemingly disparate  women's voices into one seamless fabric.   

 (Athena, the goddess of Wisdom)

Kathryn  is a poet of such thoroughgoing honesty that reading some of these poems feels like eavesdropping, they are that closely focused on the details of experience. Whether  waking up from surgery for breast cancer  or describing the massage therapist kneading the scar on her chest, Kirkpatrick does not prettify the moment. Nor does she diminish it.  What makes this book memorable is how she weaves her own perspective  into a tapestry of other presences,  creating  a chorus of wounded, healing women rather than one solitary woman’s encounter with death and renewal.  The goddesses are here, with their grave and luminous visages.  And women you might meet at the local laundromat or fast food restaurant. Who is speaking this book?   The feminine.  Everywoman in her fear, her wit,  and her  Interior grace.  

Athena

Not the saucered face of an owl

but a serpent coiled in her hair,

the shape of its head, on which everything

depends, indeterminate.

Triangle perhaps. Maybe oval.

She’s not wooed by the snake like Eve

but one with the snake like Medusa.

This is wisdom with bite,

appraisal cool and round as an egg.

Forget the olive tree, flute,

yoked oxen and bridled horse.

Forget Prometheus who tried to take credit.

The flames at her chest tell us

what she has suffered,

what she has made of her suffering.

WRITING ON THE RAZOR'S EDGE: RICHARD KRAWIEC

(Richard Krawiec, poet, novelist, editor/publisher of Jacar Press, and literary activist)

Richard Krawiec writes poems that are an edgy and satisfying marriage of tenderness and well-honed attentiveness to the connections, often fraying, among people and the various places in which they find themselves, both physically and emotionally. How the poems' innermost pulses play out along their surfaces intrigues me, never more so than in Krawiec's new collection, She Hands Me the Razor, whose publication by Press 53 is forthcoming.

If that title takes you somewhat aback, you are not alone. What it calls up is an ambiguous collaboration, but between whom and why? Here is the title poem.

She Hands Me the Razor

when I ask

she hands me the razor

trust or faith I don’t know

where to begin to stroke

upward downward

I press the three whip-thin

blades against her skin

how much pressure

does she need do I want

it is always a matter of finding

another’s boundaries

one’s own limits

I pull slowly

across the arched muscle of her calf

the stretched tightness of her thigh

a few wisps of black hair escape

I press harder feel that catch

which halts my breath in mid exhaust

no rose blooms so I return

to the world of breathing

slower now I scrape off the lather

with mincing strokes reveal

each dimple freckle curve

consider the flesh

like Michelangelo

where to daub stroke edge

how to reveal the many

smooth faces of God

The religious imagery brings the attentive reader up short, that arched muscle of calf signaling more than flesh, all the while staying faithful to flesh and its challenges and mysteries. From the image of "no rose blooms," a rose window of connotations blooms, so that when in the next 5 lines we are asked to consider, along with the poet, Michelangelo's brush stroke as it reveals the face of God, we have been prepared for revelation. So quietly, so subtly that we are not quite sure at the moment where we are. On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Or in the bathroom of man and woman engaged in this intimate act of shaving flesh, knowing the flesh in its dimple, freckle, curve? We inhabit both, of course. That is where the poem leaves us, in the midst of the most searing and mysterious revelation.

Fred Chappell captures the achievement of these poems in his dustjacket testimonial:

The things they discover, observe, and reveal might cause anyone to flinch. But this poet does not avert his gaze; he sees and endures and at last achieves a dearly bought and perhaps unexpected grace. I admire this collection enormously because I never doubted, always thinking, "Yes, this is how it must have been." Powerful experiences powerfully rendered with an art that seems almost casual. I salute this high, rude accomplishment."

Judging the Worth

another 5AM wake-up call

from the child who has learned

the joy of song before language

he alternates high then low doos then lats

the melody brooklike a wander without refrain

his child's scat lacks the edge of sex

and sorrow adults impose on expression

do-lat-deet-da-duuuh-lo-lo-lo-loooooow

outside it is all mist and fog

the yellow notes of streetlights

diffuse like brilliant words that have lost

the structure of their argument

I watch a small tornado rise

from the exhaust of my neighbor's car

my son hunches into my chest

it toooowl he says and I agree

it is cold but his breath warms

my shoulder his chest protects my own

he burrows his arms between us

one hand pops free his fingers slide

over his thumb as if testing fabric

the weight and weave judging the worth

of this life he throws his head up laughs

his teeth small and bright as stars

the firmament his face radiates

around us hidden in the dark branches

of the pines and hardwoods birds

chorus a greeting; the cacophony

of their song edges towards clarity

if I can only stand still long enough

to listen

When asked about the structure and craft of his book, Richard says: "I was trying to put together a collection that had a non-lineal narrative of sorts, where there was a progression of themes. The first section deals with relationships, lovers, spouses, parents and children, and what happens when there are disruptions, how people pull apart, come together. In the second section there is a movement out to witness the world, with some of the difficulties found in relationships both magnified and transformed as the poet moves into larger spheres,beyond the family. I'm hoping it works sort of like the way a musician might improvise on a theme. The third section is, hopefully, about attempting to embrace and transcend the life you fall into, to find a place of resolution, grace, mercy.I also hope the collection has an emotional arc, or narrative. Or maybe intertwined emotional threads."

Richard's earlier chapbook, Breakdown: A Father's Journey, was published in 2008 by Main Street Rag Press. About this collection, I commented in a blurb: Richard Krawiec's courageous, unblinking art has created a collection that is both terrifying and beautiful. "I recycle today's images/into language I hope/ will help me endure..." he explains. The poems that he has wrought from this struggle are harrowing, yet tender. They are, finally, nothing less than love poems.

Its title poem appears in this new collection. Harrowing, yes. Courageous, in spades.

Breakdown

like the aftermath of violent tides

piled leaves debris the street

your parents called again

again I told them

nothing

what do they wish

to hear from me

that your older brother

armed with a dictionary

ordered you to comply

with his words of assault

younger brother pinned

your arms as he arched and sliced

into your body

father got you

drunk in a hotel room in Mexico

mother bruised

you to silence with egg beaters

hair brushes and wooden spoons

now they enforce silence

with flowers cards claims of love

and the repeated emphasis

on the suffering you cause

them

by curling on a bed

in the Psychiatric Ward

of the State Hospital

safely hidden

inside a code

of Oz tornadoes

and Bizzaro cartoons

that bring you messages

from the Virgin and her angels

in this world you are always

three years old and killing

your children

watching yourself

be tossed raggedly

down the staircase

you believe in your fault

you can never be

sorry enough

so you construct a grid

of global conspiracy

to make your violators

heroes who saved you

by leaving clues

to what they'd done

the leaves are thick

I tell your mother

and as each one breaks down

the piles seem larger more

impenetrable

we are your mother tells me

having a nice autumn

Several of the book's most powerful and moving poems appear in the last section.

At the Borders

the woman in dancer’s black

stretch top skin-sleek

slacks draws a cigarette from the sea

green box of Newports

she doesn’t have to pace

through this Border’s

where single men

Armenian? Korean? Latino?

a verge of suspects

tic-tac-toe the cafe

simply carrying her iced

and cream-topped coffee

sliding a cigarette from fingers

to mouth is enough

to send heads ducking

to notebooks cell phones

any pretense of purpose

besides loneliness

why do we connect

if not to mountain-mist

the obvious

we are all alone

and dying

Rilke had his panther

sleek and muscular

padding behind steel bars

while men watched from without

now men sit imprisoned

behind wooden chair slats

while she stalks

across the dark interior

into the sunlight

where they no longer belong

Approaching Grace

a woman wearing a towel

shawl over a long dress

stands in the rush of tide

beating a bodhran

her body chants

from foot to foot

the white caps crash her hem

across the flagellant water

a crimson sun rises

above the mast of a shrimp trawler,

burns through the heliotrope haze,

the woman chants, beats, sways

her offered prayers lost

in the guttural glissade

of the sand-crunching waves

the woman I love arches

a sun salutation

her mermaid hair flows

wild tangles in the breeze

like the sea oats that shiver

their seed heads on the crest

of the weed-protected dune

along the porch railings

tourists peep out

tentative as snails

housewives in bathrobes

men in gym shorts and T-shirts

they smile shyly at me

in my paisley boxers

a Japanese mystic

claims the ocean contains

every thought that ever existed

the priestesses of Sangora

baptize with this wisdom

on the coasts of South Africa

I approach grace by watching

the feral curl of white froth,

rising sun, chanting woman

the red infusion of morning light

on my lover’s already glowing face

The poems in When She Hands Me the Razor ferry us through dangerous waters, leaving us finally upon the shore of grace, that infusion of morning light on a loved face. No wonder, after reading through these poems last night, I woke up with these lines from W.H. Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats sounding in my head: "In the prison of his days/ Teach the free man how to praise." Krawiec's new collection of poems culminates in praise, which has always been the goal and gift of poetry.

Poet of the Day: Terri Kirby Erickson

Terri Kirby Erickson's new book of poetry, In the Palms of Angels, has just appeared from Press 53. The following two poems are from this collection, and their quality of quiet attention and recollection can be found in all the poems between its covers.

Terri is the author of two other collections of poetry, Thread Count (2006), and Telling Tales of Dusk (2009, Press 53).

Terri's work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous literary journals, anthologies and other publications, including: A Prairie Journal, Basilica Review, Bay Leaves, Blue Fifth Review, Broad River Review, Christian Science Monitor, Cowboypoetry.com, Dead Mule, Eclectica, Foundling Review, Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities; Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Literary Mama, Long Story Short, Muse India, Nibble, North Carolina Literary Review, Oak Bend Review, Parent:Wise Austin, Paris Voice, Pinesong, and Pisgah Review, among others.

BOOGIE-WOOGIE

Nobody taught our father to play,

but he could crank out a boogie-woogie

beat on his sister's piano,

fingers bouncing on the keys like ten

happy children, feet tapping—

smiling

like he never did before he left for work

or came home, tired. He'd collapse

on the couch,

loosen his belt—become so still

in sleep, you'd think

he wasn't breathing. But Dad could fly

across a keyboard—his body so light,

we put our hands on his shoulders

to keep him on the ground.

sponge bath

Draped in towels,

my grandmother sits in a hard -backed

chair, a white bowl

of soapy water on the floor.

She lifts her frail arm, then rests it,

gratefully, in her daughter's palm.

Gliding a wet

washclogh, my mother's hand becomes a

cloud, and every bruise, a rain-drenched

flower.

POET OF THE DAY: Valerie Nieman

Valerie Nieman is a poet, novelist, short story writer, travel writer, literary magazine editor, and teacher. Her third novel, Blood Clay, is being published by Press 53. Set in rural North Carolina, it focuses on our crucial need for community and the cost exacted for truth-telling. Her 2000 novel Survivors took readers into the hard lives and hard times of a West Virginia factory town in the early 1970s. Fred Chappell said, “Survivors is a jolt to the system…. Valerie Nieman pulls no punches. What she calls ‘unleashed reality’ roars through every sentence. Unforgettable.” Her first novel, Neena Gathering, was a science fiction tale set in the Appalachians. Fidelities, her collection of short fiction, features stories set in rural areas from the Alleghenies to the Carolina Piedmont, most of them published in journals such as The Kenyon Review and Arts & Letters, and in anthologies such as Degrees of Elevation and Racing Home: New Stories by Award-Winning North Carolina Authors. Her poetry collection, Wake Wake Wake, was published in 2006. Her work has been selected in two national chapbook competitions and appeared in such journals as Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Blackbird, New Letters, REDiViDER, and the Southern Poetry Review, as well as numerous anthologies, most recently After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events and Southern Appalachian Poetry: An Anthology of Works by 37 Poets.

Two April poems from Wake Wake Wake

First Generation

(First published in Tar River Poetry)

You spade the kitchen garden

each spring, turning the fine,

dark dirt loose from the years.

Gladiolas you planted for your dead wife

sprout again, sharpened green,

opening smaller and smaller

yellow faces that wag red tongues.

You mutter peasant German

going backward in the row,

planting potatoes

under a dark moon,

planting peas, planting cabbage

by the signs.

Does the seed know

those stick-shaped words

you never taught me?

At night you walk the rooms

of an unwarmed house,

your steps too short

for a man as tall as you have been.

You write letters in pencil

on blue-lined paper, careful English

dancing in German shoes.

The table where you work is ring-marked:

for years it held plants on saucers, cuttings.

When she died, these died also.

After a time, you stacked the pots

in the cellar.

You write me letters

telling of the cold, of summers

that are shorter and shorter,

and I am south, feeling the sun

earlier and later,

feeling here that I have failed my blood.

Your eyes have become paler blue,

and I would want to say

the color of March sky,

thin lines on paper,

or lilac petals, faded.

They measure out

this distance between us,

the rivers and the days,

and mark out the unseasonable shadows

that sharpen along the road home.

Hanging Up Clothes

(First published in The Greenfield Review)

Out in the last fine rain,

the light red in the west,

after the storm.

A delight for the eye

and tomorrow.

A deer comes from the wood line

and stands deep in daisies,

watching.

My white-flag work

does not frighten her.

The red light glows

in her summer coat.

The light is red.

The deer grazes.

I move from line to line.