William Everett: Coffee With the Poets

William Everett gave us a thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable reading and commentary about his poetry at our last Coffee With the Poets at City Lights Bookstore on August 19. Bill is both novelist and poet and a former professor of Ethics and Theology. He is fluent in German (he's done translations) and Lord knows what else. He's mostly fluent in poetry, however, and we were delighted to be able to welcome him to Sylva. After the reading several of us retired downstairs to Spring Street Cafe for lunch and a casual poetry workshop around the table. What could be better than good food and poetry?

Bill was waiting in the Regional Room of City Lights Bookstore.

We were immediately joined by Charlie, the Bookstore Cat!

Food, glorious food! Muffins, cookies, coffee, lemonade, and so on.

Bill organized his presentation around his journey as poet. His earlier poems showed his ear for the sounds of language and the influence of poets whose work he has admired in the past. He is clear about how the poetic tradition guides and instructs us as we write our own poems.

The following are some early poems he read. To read more about Bill, go to his website www.williameverett.com.

Rusted roofs
---where children played,
Graybeaten boards
---engrained with laughter,
Christmas pines in morning
--drape the walls
---in shadow calico.
The sun bakes down
--the flower patch,
A puppy hushed in memory
--underneath the porch.
Old folks whisper in the weeds,
--it was not so,
--it was not so.


9-10-83

Round red lips pubaceous
Smile in the glossy of the party
Frozen on the yellowing page,
A sentimental daiquiri
Of tender expectations.
How, with whom and where
Will teasing eyes find their reflection?
Who will find the woman
In the girl in the taffeta gown?

3-27-87/4-6-10

Sweet lady,

if
in tinseled tear
you pray the evergreen upon us,
supplicate the lavish laughter of your heart
to snow upon the muddy traces of our mind.

12-17-80

Nan Watkins, prose writer, translator, and musician, listens.

After Bill's presentation, Newt Smith read some new poems. We continued our comments on his work at lunch.

Dianna Jurss, below, on the left, will be the featured poet in September.

IF ARE IN THE AREA, PLEASE JOIN US ON THE THIRD THURSDAY OF EACH MONTH FOR COFFEE WITH THE POETS AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE IN SYLVA, NORTH CAROLINA. PHONE: 336-9499. WEBSITE: WWW.CITYLIGHTSNC.COM.

ECHOES ACROSS THE BLUE RIDGE: MARY MIKE KELLER

When Mary Mike Keller read her poem "As the Deer" at our Gala Publication party for Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, hosted by City Lights Bookstore two weeks ago, I was swept away. It's a beautiful poem, and she read it beautifully. This poem is yet another reason to own a copy of Echoes. Go to the Echoes page on Facebook and take a look. Or the Netwest blog. You will find information on how to purchase the book.

As The Deer

The dulcimer drones tranquil

as the pick grazes across strings

as the deer across the glade

My thumb under f sharp mimics

her tongue curled to pluck

a blade intoned on b

Quietness slides along her body

my finger descending the string

in a smooth slur of music

The sweetness of the melody

new as young grass lingers

in the lea of my instrument

A barre chord trembles

I wait

for that last unfettered fret

----Mary Michelle Brodine Keller

Mary Mike reads her poem at the Gala event.

COFFEE WITH THE POETS: WILLIAM EVERETT

(William Everett at the July Coffee With the Poets)

On August 19 City Lights Bookstore will welcome poet and fiction writer William Everett as guest. Bill is a Netwest member, the author of eight books and many poems. He will read and talk about his journey as a writer, his creative process, and engage participants in their own ways of accessing their voices. The event will take place in the Regional Room of City Lights at 10:30. After a break for lunch, there will be a two hour writing workshop at 1:30. Participants should bring copies of one poem or excerpt of prose for discussion.

Bill maintains a website (www.williameverett.com) which I highly recommend visiting. Here is his announcement of his visit to City Lights next week. You will have to go to his site to read the second poem!

On Thursday, August 19, I will be reading and reflecting on my poetry at 10:30 am for the “Coffee with the Poets” group at City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC. The poet’s group is just one of several under the umbrella of the Netwest Mountain Writers, affiliated with the North Carolina Writers Network. (Check outwww.netwestwriters.blogspot.com.) We are convened by Kay Byer, a former NC Poet Laureate, who has graciously encouraged me to reflect on my thirty years of often hidden poetry writing. As I have been reflecting on this welcome task, two poems popped up that I thought I’d share with you. They both involve the quirky, unexpected way that poems elude our normal patterns of perception and expression. I thought you might enjoy them.

I Love That Poetry

Do you like poetry? I asked.

Oh yes, he said. Last year I went to see a poet

Maya Angelou and she was beautiful.

The curtain opened and the spotlight lit upon her hair,

not white, but lustrous gray.

She wore a long crushed velvet dress, much like a kaftan,

bell shaped sleeves descending to wide cuffs

embroidered with a band that looked like kinte cloth.

A long string of pearls draped down from her broad shoulders,

picking up the highlights in her hair.

She was surrounded by a bank of ferns that reached up to her waist

as she sat down among them.

The ferns were like extensions of the dress. They billowed like her hair.

Oh, it was gorgeous. I just love that poetry.

I’m glad you liked it, passed my lips. Perhaps you might cut off a little more

above my ears. I want to look my best tomorrow night.

RAMADAN: REMEMBERING AGHA SHAHID ALI

The muslim holy month of ramadan (http://www.holidays.net/ramadan/)begins tonight at sunset, and i can think of no better way to honor the time than posting a ghazal by the late Kashmiri-AMERICAN poet Agha Shahid Ali. after the assaults on islam that we've heard in our media and swirling around cyberspace, the image of god weeping in one's arms tonight leaves me moved to silence. Perhaps silence is the best way to respond to this poem, a long, listening silence. ( I send my Ramadan greetings to Fatemeh and Debbie's Hassan.) More about the poet follows his poem.

tonight

BY AGHA SHAHID ALI

Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar
—Laurence Hope

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?

Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” ”to make Me beautiful—”

“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—

A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—

All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken

Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities

multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.

He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed

No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight

God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—

I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.

Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer

fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?

This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—

God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

---------------

Agha Shahid Ali was born in New Delhi, India in 1949. He grew up in Kashmir, the son of a distinguished and highly educated family in Srinagar. He attended the University of Kashmir, the University of Delhi and, upon arriving in the United States in 1975, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Arizona. Though a Kashmiri Muslim, Ali is best known in the U.S. and identified himself as an American poet writing in English. The recipient of numerous fellowships and awards and a finalist for the National Book Award, he taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Princeton College and in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. At the time of his death in 2001, Ali was noted as a poet uniquely able to blend multiple ethnic influences and ideas in both traditional forms and elegant free-verse. His poetry reflects his Hindu, Muslim, and Western heritages.

If the hate-mongers among us could sit down quietly and read Agha Shahid Ali's poems, they might come to the sort of profound "opening" of mind that only art can provide.

COFFEE WITH THE POETS: Jeannette Cabinis-Brewin

(Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin)

City Lights Bookstore and the NC Writers Network West now sponsor Coffee With the Poets every third Thursday of the month. Inspired by a similar gathering in Hayesville which has been in existence for a number of years, this program is only in its second month. Our first meeting featured poet Glenda Beall of Hayesville, former Program Coordinator for Netwest. Glenda read and discussed her new chapbook, Now Might As Well Be Then, published by Finishing Line Press.




(At the coffee and tea table)


Thursday's guest was Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, who brought her beautifully rendered poetry to us, along with an intelligent and stimulating commentary. We could have talked on for hours about poetry, the mountains, environmentalism, spirituality...well, I could go on, but wouldn't you rather read some of Jeannette's poems? The ones that follow are from her chapbook Patriate, which won the Longleaf Press chapbook prize in 2007. She began with a quote from William Stafford, a voice that's been like a touchstone for her.

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

--William Stafford

Jeannette then read this beautiful poem written as if in conversation with Stafford's poem.
Still That Way
--with thanks to William Stafford

The thread I follow winds among wild plum trees
in an orchard planted by black bears. It drops

in windblown loops from nine beanpoles
lately wound with tender pods, makes a beeline

for the garnet parade-hats of sourwoods on the ridge,
their cream tassels buzzing with next year's honey.

It's drawn upstream by the gravity of the mossy altar
we call The Stone Table, and weaves a circle round it

for safekeeping of leafy fair-linen and acorn-cup
chalices. As it trails down the road, the thread takes a zig

and a zag, caught up in an exuberance of happy dogs.
While I follow it, I am not lost. The dirt names itself:

here's the sandy soil where coneflowers poke
spike seednoses this way and that; here's the sreambank

where in spring the Quaker ladies throng, feet down
in the dampness. Here the sparrow grass sleep in their bed

and parsnips lengthen their white sweet bodies down into dark.
The granite heft of the knoll lies across a hidden stream

that springs up on north and south to spread into pools,
one upwelling frequented by bars, the other by blacksmiths.

Let me explain about the thread: it's wrapped around this house
from foundation stone to roofpeak, lies across the marriage bed

length and breadth so many times, it's warp and woof
of the blanket that, sighing, we draw over our nakedness.

beneath it his heart pounds like the beater bar of a loom.
and I listen. We grow old; some things are still steady, but we know

nothing can stop time's unfolding. Like the skein for a covered basket
it pays out, soft and pliant, as I wind and count the loops

around the board. From this window I see the places it has knit
into home: vegetable patch, wild grove, flowery verge, all now bitten

black with frost. The basket's no longer full and at any moment
I may draw up the raggletaggle end, frayed out to nothingness and my hands'

surprised, scribe a final airy O




(William Everett listens as Jeannette responds to his question. He will be August's guest author.)


One of our favorites was a new poem titled Still, in which Jeannette plays on that word. Here are some lines I especially like, Randolph speaking at the outset.


My daddy sometimes was known
to weld up a still, he grins.
He’d pretend and go along
with whatever wink and purpose was given.

Still and all, that was the way
the old-timers got around and along.
And it still is today.
Some things, over time, still strong

as double-run corn. Like
Randolph’s will, like love
for the burn, that likker-spike beyond flavor.

---from Still





An exemplary quote from Blaise Pascal is tailor-made for our contemporary rushed, texting, online lives: "The sole cause of our unhappiness is that we do not know how to stay quietly in our rooms."


Jeannette concludes the poem "Pupil" with similar instructions to us and to herself.

Learn to sit still. The dark


iris of the mind,


receptacle and organizer,


opens inside, synapses making


birds, movements, sounds, thoughts,


glass and wood--a hole in the wall--


into a whole and living thing.


The cage of mullions,


a hologram of creation:


each pane entirely full


of new and repetitive beauties.

(Netwest member Ben Eller)


Afterward, we had lunch at Spring Street Cafe, underneath the bookstore. Pictured are Jeannette, Bill Everett, and Newt Smith, Netwest Treasurer.

POETRIO: MARY ADAMS AND RHETT ISEMAN TRULL

Mary Adams reads from Commandment at this month's Poetrio.

Every month Malaprop's Bookstore features Poetrio, a gathering of poets, usually three, reading from their work on a Sunday afternoon. This month two of the featured poets were friends,

Mary Adams and Rhett Iseman Trull, along with William Swarts, someone I had the pleasure to meet at the reading. Mary's chapbook Commandment was published last fall by Spring Street Editions in Sylva, and Rhett's first book The Real Warnings was published recently by Anhinga Press.

Mary has been a friend for many years, first as a colleague at WCU and later as, well, a friend and sister poet, animal lover, and partaker of wine and pizza whenever we can get together. Her fist book, Epistles from the Planet Photosynthesis, was published by the U. of Florida Press. She is also a Milton scholar and expert in just about everything literary. I've devoted several posts to her, so I'll include the links-- http://kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com/search?q=Mary+Adams. You may order her chapbook and her full length collection from City Lights Bookstore.

Rhett is editor par excellence of the new poetry journal Cave Wall, which she manages with her fabulous husband Jeff. She's a graduate of the MFA program in writing at UNC-Greensboro and a favorite of my ole friend Fred Chappell. I featured her as Poet of the Week last year on my laureate blog, so if you want to read more, which you certainly should, you should go to http://ncpoetlaureate.blogspot.com/2009/04/poet-of-week-rhett-iseman-trull.html

The third poet was William Swarts, whose book Strickland Plains has just been released. I'd not met Bill till this Sunday, but I can tell you that he will be the featured guest at Coffee With the Poets at City Lights Bookstore in the fall.

Here are some photos from this Sunday's Poetrio. Many thanks to Alsace and Virginia for making this series so enjoyable!

Mary responding to an unseen interrogator!

Mary's lovely mother Betty, on hand to hear her daughter read.

Rhett talks with members of the audience after her reading.

Rhett Trull signs the Malaprop's reader's registry.



In a dark cafe the author and friends drink to the publication of her chapbook and her reading at Malaprop's. (Actually it's Jack of the Woods, and it's dark because my flash wasn't working.)

ECHOES ACROSS THE BLUE RIDGE--FEATURING ROSEMARY ROYSTON

After taking a break for a few weeks from my blog, I'm back with big news. ECHOES ACROSS THE BLUE RIDGE: STORIES, ESSAYS, AND POEMS BY WRITERS LIVING IN AND INSPIRED BY THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS has arrived. For the next several posts I will be featuring the work of some of the contributors. This book will sell like hotcakes, so click on the link just above to go to the Netwest blog to order a copy.

My first author is Rosemary Royston, a young poet who just gets better and better. She lives in northeast Georgia. Her poetry has been published in The Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, and is forthcoming in Literal Latte and online at Dark Sky Magazine and Public Republic. She is the recipient of the 2010 Literal Latte Food Verse Award, and in 2004 she placed first and third in poetry, Porter Fleming Literary Contest. Rosemary has taught poetry courses at the Institute for Continuing Learning at Young Harris College, and she holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University.

I especially love Rosemary's Dogwood Winter, the last of the three. It's a poem I wish I'd written! But I wouldn't mind claiming the other two, either.

Neighbor Lady

She has made them beds.
Beds of hay sporadically placed
in the ragged green pasture.
Pallets, really. Some say

she once lived north of here
had a high falutin’, high payin’ job.
Now she wears yellow rubber gloves,
like the ones I wear to clean the bathroom,

and there’s a turban of sorts on her head.
They say she’s the richest lady in the county.
Sometimes on a soft summer’s night
I see her truck on the property line

and in the air I can feel her presence
as she soothes those she loves so much.
She has spoken to me once: One cow
is worth ten good neighbors.

The Possibility of Snow

Ms. Callie is like a perfumed sparrow,
tiny and fragile in dress slacks,
the seam straight and pressed,
her sweater a matching shade of green.

When I hug her hello I’m afraid she will topple
under the weight of my slender arms.
At 80 her hair is coiffed and teased
and she’s just short of five feet,

only a head taller than my son, Luke.
We are visiting Angie, her daughter, (my friend)
and after talking and laughing over Oolong tea
we realize that my 7-year old has vanished—

he’s not in the guest room with the TV,
nor is he chasing the many cats around the house.
His drawing pad lies abandoned on the floor.
In the distance we hear a soft song of sorts

and are drawn to it, only to find him
on Ms. Callie’s bed, stretched out,
his head propped against the footboard,
conversing with her on the possibility of snow.

Dogwood Winter

Ants raid the bath, wasps claim the washroom,
even as the cool of winter looms.

The forsythia sings against a chorus
of green, yet the hue of winter looms.

The bunting’s a blur of vibrant blue,
off-setting winter’s gray loom.

Calves nurse in the open field, chilled
as the nip of winter looms.

Blood buds of azaleas burst forth
even though winter looms.

The creek hums a rain-filled song,
oblivious to the winter that looms.

Rosemary, thyme, and sage grow
in the sunroom, even as winter looms.