Lunch With Harold and Jane

Yesterday we had lunch at Spring Street Cafe in Sylva with Harold and Jane Schiffman, who spend summer and fall in their mountaintop home in Robbinsville. Harold has set my Alma poems to music in a cantata titled Alma (see sidebar with cd cover and link to Harold's website) and last year premiered in New York City a song cycle for soprano and piano based on my "Blood Mountain" sequence from Black Shawl. He also composed cello music for the cd of Wake that Spring Street Editions released several years ago.




He's interested in seeing new poems, hoping he hears music rising out of them. I'm hoping so, too. Here is one of the new poems I gave him, in the chapbook Lit by Language, published for this year's Asheville Wordfest. The theme? Azaleas. (If you would like to order a copy of this chapbook, please contact Laura Hope-Gill at laurahopegill@aol.com)






RAPT

for Chris, former student

“Nothing exists I can’t azalea with a glass of water.
Should there be a three month grace azalea for sex?...
I blow smoke at the azalea and write
letters to imaginary lovers, azaleas. "

C.S. Carrier, from Azalea

I too love how azalea
seduces me,
makes me want more of her
coming out, debutante
no matter how many years

she has been resurrected
from mulch. What azalea desires
I can’t fathom, other
than just enough water
to suck, enough
humus to snuggle her roots
into. So, let azalea be,
kindling again atop Gregory Bald.

In the valleys’ front yards,
let her bloom white as doilies,
or Barbie-doll pink.
Let her dare to bloom gypsy magenta.
Don’t make her sell perfume
& cheap whiskey, or be a verb
curing heartburn or hangover.

Azalea bloomed overtime
in my hometown. Sure,
I took her for granted,
but that was before I climbed
Gregory Ridge and
beheld her as flame into
which I could disappear,
turning to ash on the wind.

When azalea blooms now
in our mountains, I dream
about vanishing into her
small throat, my poem
like a proboscis
listening,
listening,
rapt in the sound of azalea.

MY INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT BREWER ON "POETIC ASIDES"

A few weeks ago Robert Brewer interviewed me for his blog called "Poetic Asides." If you go the link http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/2009/07/07/InterviewWithPoetKathrynStriplingByer.aspx, you'll find it. Robert's site is well worth visiting for more reasons than my interview, though. He has tips, springboards, and other information for poets. If you are looking for daily prompts to rev up your writing, pay his site a visit.

INDEPENDENCE DAY, by David Hopes

David Hopes sent me this beautiful poem yesterday and gave me permission to share it with my readers.

Independence Day, 2009



A day more perfect could hardly–
a day more purely summer-
more moving marble in the heavens,
more green, more cuddled to the
bosom of some more radiant god,
more blue crystal Carolina
could ever– well, you understand.

I will dedicate this day to Allison’s wedding,
where I will wear white,
which is less hilarious than some may think.
A week ago it was Jeff’s funeral,
where I refused to wear black
in my place at the pole
which bore the casket, refused to wear black,
but green instead,
to honor the great wheels turning
even at that moment all around us.

I will go to Allison’s wedding in a white, white shirt
and those white shoes one has for summer,
and the rest of the time
shall cook the two immense zucchinis,
forearm long, forearm thick
(an image a little disturbing
now that I think of it), most recently produced
by the energy of vine and dirt and rain
to make my dinner
on a summer afternoon, before an evening wedding.
when you know the summer Constellations–
oh! wheeling there, and wheeling–
will be as
Fireworks, so slow,
the “Ah!” drawn out into the days of God.

MY LAST DAY AS NC'S POET LAUREATE

(Dancing to the Music!)

My term as North Carolina's Poet Laureate officially ends at midnight tonight. The four years I've spent trying to represent our state's writers and readers have been full to overflowing. And no wonder. North Carolina is brimful with writers, as we all know, but even better, it is full of people who want to be a part of this literary community, people who work hard to keep it alive. I've tried to do my job as best as I could, but I leave frustrated by what remains to be done and how difficult these tasks become in the wake of our financial crisis. How long before we have another Laureate? Who knows. I hope it's not more than a year. In the meantime, I will continue to keep this blog going, and as always, I welcome your comments, suggestions, and your own poems and prose.

One of my good friends, Newt Smith, of the WCU English Department, spends his last day as a WCU employee today, too. I was asked to write a retirement poem for him, so I'm posting it today, one of my last "assignments," one that I enjoyed to the max! Newt and I worked together for a number of years in the English Department. The "cubicle" I mention in the poem does not refer to the laureateship! It refers to the tiny, tiny office I occupied for years as Poet-in-Residence at WCU. "Retard" is a play on how folks in the mountains pronounce certain words like stairs and retired. I have always thought "climbing the stars" sounded so much more poetic than climbing the stairs!

The doris in the poem is my friend doris davenport, whose work has been featured on both my blogs. Look her up.

As for Ghost Dogs, I didn't make that up. There are books about these manifestations, several of which have been published by Blair Publishers in Winston-Salem. Here is a brief description of Ghost Dogs of the South. (Blair)

Dog ghosts (dogs that have become ghosts), ghost dogs (humans who return as ghosts in the shape of dogs), dogs that see ghosts, dogs that are afraid of ghosts--all make an appearance in these twenty stories that illuminate the shadow side of man's best friend.

So, you can see this last occasional poem pulled in a lot of material. Why shouldn't a poem cast as wide a net as it wants? Spread its roots as deeply as it needs to spread them?



(Yellow Retro Roots, by Cindy Davis)




(Newt)


Retard

For Newt

Once I heard a woman,
when asked in downtown Sylva
how her husband was doing,
say, “Why, honey, he’s
retard.” I knew what she meant
and your neighbor Mildred when she said,
“I’m going to climb up the stars.”
That’s called climbing the Retard Track,

not the Tenure Track. Just imagine,
Newt, now you too can
climb up the stars. Or
spend all day doing
The Dawg, as our friend doris
calls it. I saw her do it
at Wordfest, at the Smoky Mountains
Bookfair, after Obama
won. (She sent me a jpg.) If you had
to think every day about tenure,
you wouldn’t be caught dead
Doin’ the Dawg. But now, dearest
Newt, you can do it
till the proverbial cows come
home, if your back doesn’t
give up the Ghost Dog and bring
you down. Just do The Dawg long
enough to feel like you’re really
and truly Retard, and then sit yourself

down, have a beer, look at the sky.
Listen to birds. Did we ever believe
they were out there when we had to work
in our cubicles? Don’t get get me
started on clouds. How they keep moving
on to another place, sort of like being
Retard. The sky’s a big dance floor.
The clouds like it like that!
They said to tell you,
my friend, that you’ll like it too.



(doris)

I Got the Garden Blues

Maybe it's just that time of summer, the spinach long gone, along with the broccoli, the asparagus, and the lettuce turning bitter (though the guinea pig still loves it). Maybe it's the cabbage worms (see the cabbage below) or whatever bug has done a job on our Red Russian Kale. The okra plants look puny. Worst of all are the tomatoes, one of my heirlooms looking like it was ready to bust out of its cage, little tomatoes a -settin' on, and then yesterday afternoon, there it was looking limp as I felt in the 90 degree heat. No amount of water seems to enliven it. I feel devastated and am taking it personally. Why'd you want to do that to me, after I been so good to you? The other tomatoes don't look like they're thriving either. Anybody have any advice? Any good blues songs to sing to the tomatoes to make them perk up?




The blueberries have been coming on strong, but we have to get out early to beat the birds. No cherries this year.

On the other hand, my friend doris davenport will be glad to know that the morning glories are doing just fine. They will be blooming soon.

And the golden chard, which I have in the garden and in pots, still makes me smile.

And the coneflower patch is crowded, blooms pushing their way to the top.

But I want my heirloom tomatoes back. This is the first year I've tried heirlooms and I so wanted them to work. Every time I look at them, I want to cry me a river.

The Heaven of Animals

(Arjun's grave beside our garden)

I found James Dickey's poetry one Friday night in the Wesleyan College Library. Just about everybody was out on dates, so I had the place to myself, including the whole American poetry section. That's where I first read The Heaven of Animals, which remains one of my favorite Dickey poems. I thought of it again last night after reading Vicki Lane's post on her blog (see sidebar) about her "sweet Bear" having died under the willow where she liked to sleep. After the loss of our sweet Arjun, that news carried an especially sad weight. Dickey's poem moves into the predator/prey imagery as it closes, which isn't surprising, given Dickey's experience and literary persona as hunter (yes, of various and sundry prey, in the woods and on cocktail/reading circuits). I prefer the first three stanzas when I think of Arjun and Bear.

For Arj, I would have his favorite bush, the one we called his house because he furnished it with old flowerpots and pieces of fence, spreading endlessly over him, and a young girl's lap as capacious the universe, endlessly welcoming. I would have the hydrangea bush, where he also liked to sleep, always blooming.

For Bear, I imagine a willow tree spreading its ongoing canopy as if over a Queen, fields always brimful with scents to snuffle and rabbits to chase, and an unceasing creek to splash into during the heat of the eternal afternoon.

The Heaven of Animals

by James L. Dickey

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.


Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.


To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.


For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,


More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey


May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk


Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain


At the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.


James Dickey, “The Heaven of Animals” from The Whole Motion: Collected Poems 1945-1992. Copyright © 1992 by James Dickey. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.

Machu Picchu

Well, I've been a non-blogger for the past few days. I have a good reason, though. My husband went on a once-in-a lifetime trip to Peru to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, which he did, arriving before dawn so that he could see the sun rise over the Andes. I will have photos soon, I hope, since one of his trail mates, a muy simpatica woman from Argentina took many with her digital camera and has emailed all 200 to him!

When he returned on Friday, however, he already had a slight cough, and by Saturday morning was running a fever. His appetite was fine, though, and we even had pizza for supper. Still, the fever wouldn't break, and by Sunday morning, the cough was worse and the fever much higher. Nothing to do but take him to the ER, against his will. He resists the medical profession no matter what, but this time, I would brook no resistance. He took a long time putting on shoes and socks, clean shirt, and brushing teeth, but finally I was able to get him in the car and to the ER where they immediately "masked" him and began running all sorts of blood tests, doing chest x-ray, swabs and whatnot. As soon as they heard he'd been in Peru, they feared swine flu. (Hmmm, I could write some doggerel about this experience!) One of the tests did come back positive for flu, Type A, but we are still waiting to hear about the oinkish variety.

They started him on fluids at the get-go and put him in quarantine in the hospital, where he also got hooked up to antibiotics. I was told I had to wear a mask, too, as I'd been exposed. For a little while, it was rather exciting! The first case, maybe, of swine flu in Jackson County. Soon, however, it was not so much fun, especially when they brought in the tray of awful food that evening and next morning and next lunch and so on. By then he was feeling better and ready to get out of there.

He's home now. He was able to pick blueberries this morning, though it tired him out, much to his surprise but not mine. Flu of any variety really whomps you. I am on tamiflu, just in case. I'll keep you updated.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of brief glimpses of what he traveled to Peru to see.