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.

POET OF THE DAY: Kathryn Kirkpatrick

I've long admired Kathryn Kirkpatrick's poetry. A fine scholar and teacher in the English Department at Appalachian State University, she has published work in many of the nation's best journals, including two of my favorites, CAVE WALL and SHENANDOAH. Her book OUT OF THE GARDEN was published by Mayapple Press four years ago. The following two poems are from her forthcoming book, ALTER, to be published by Press 53 in Winston-Salem, NC. Kathryn is a long-distance friend, one I wish I could see more often.

Finding the Heart

Under the hydrangea, a heart

the dogs have found, a deer's

left by a hunter in our woods,

the carcass gutted where it lay, and I,

having never seen anything

like it, larger than anyone's fist

I know of, fetch the shovel because

it is so newly out of the body,

I am sure it was beating

only yesterday or the day before

and so bare beside the knife's

fresh cut and so powerful, somehow,

as if it did the work of living

still that I cannot bear

this awful cleaving from

the breath it made

and I dig a small grave.

Chemotherapy

Up from the massage table

I catch sight of myself

in the unavoidable mirror.

Afternoon light doesn't blink.

Basic bald head. Bare pudendum.

Soft pile of belly and hips.

Once mirrors drew me like friends,

broke my gloomy moods

with a smile, eyes brighter

than I'd remembered. Now I'm sacra

to myself, a neutral suggestion,

transpersonal form. Stripped

to Neolithic goddess, I'm all

that's behind all that will ever be,

prima mater, prima material,

impersonal as rain, kneaded

to dozens of shapes, except

that my chest is scarred

which is what you'd expect

of a goddess in this 21^st century.

POET OF THE DAY: DeLana Dameron

DéLana R. A. Dameron will be reading this afternoon at Western Carolina University's spring literary festival. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has a strong interest in the intersections of history and literature. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, 42opus, storySouth, Pembroke Magazine, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. She has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Soul Mountain and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective. Dameron, a native of Columbia, South Carolina, currently resides in New York City.

Inheritance
after Lucille Clifton


Frequented in dreams
by fresh-dead loves, so I have seen
with these eyes the eyes of a spirit
who's crossed, seen the body reject
its coffin bed and climb right out
onto the church's plank floor
seen the dove at the bed's foot
calling out all names, or the red eyes
of the flesh, abandoned. Do not say
I should be grateful for perfect eyes
or their ability to see such distances.
Say I should be grateful for sight,
for open and shut.

© DéLana R.A. Dameron. How God Ends Us, University of South Carolina Press, April 2009.

POET OF THE DAY: Keith Flynn

What more to say about Keith Flynn other than he's a force of nature, a poet always on the lookout for more and more poetry? Musician, editor, teacher, essayist, organizer, day-dreamer, Keith is a Renaissance man. We are lucky to have him in North Carolina.

Keith Flynn (www.keithflynn.net) is the author of five books, including four collections of poetry: The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), and The Golden Ratio (Iris Press, 2007), and a collection of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer's Digest Books, 2007). Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review.

“If you are Chagall...”

If you are Chagall

then you believe that

fish can thresh wheat.

If you are Rodin,

the gods are your

playthings and their

hands are perfect.

The total work of art

is achieved through the

soul’s inner necessity,

the way music persuades

without argument.

In this world the horses

want to stand on their

back feet and walk

like a man, towering

over the human who

has infuriated them.

All the chimneys become

holy relics and the hills

raise their skirts and

cancan, with the trees

for legs and blue feet

built from pools of water,

kicking their heels as high

as the light will allow.

From the shore the boats

are dwarfed, meager vessels

whose eager travel is

blown to molecules, notes

of the sky that prompt

the boiling ocean to pound

all attempts to tame it.

Gravity has long been

banished from this kingdom,

where the moon is the

only law and the horses

walk upright into the waves.

Their riders trail like birds

in the barking wake.

Every horse is secretly,

romantically, involved with

the sea and when they

sleep they dream of

whales flying unimpeded

through the deep music.

(Fish pity the cities).

Poet of the Day: Nancy Coats Posey

Nancy Posey is a firecracker of a woman. I met her through the NC English Teachers Association a few years back and admired her style. (I think she was wearing snazzy boots!) Former a high school English teacher, she now teaches at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, where she has organized a poetry symposium featuring Cathy Smith Bowers, Joseph Bathanti, and other excellent NC poets. She's an organizer, an energizer, and, yes, a POET. Her chapbook won the online contest sponsored by Robert Brewer's and this year was published. She is the kind of teacher our public schools can ill afford to lose. I wish we had more Nancy Posey's in classrooms across the state.

Nancy's first book, Let the Lady Speak was recently published. To order, please go to www.highlandcreekbooks.com/lettheladyspeak/index.html.

From the Introduction: As the eldest of five daughters, the third in five generations of first-born daughters, I was never discouraged from finding my voice or speaking my mind. This particular group of poems came together as I imagined not only what my grandmothers and great grandmothers might have to say, but other women in history and literature as well. I am most fortunate, too, that I do not have to imagine my own mother’s soft-spoken voice. I just have to stop and listen. A voracious reader, I worked my way through the biographies during some of my years in elementary, while I have found many of my fictional characters just as real. Always interested in considering the other point of view, therefore, I was just as curious about what Lady Macbeth or Scarlet O’Hara might have to say as Amelia Earhart or Anne Frank. I have a button pinned on the board beside my computer desk that reads “I’m a Good Listener!” Some days, if I listen closely, I hear some of those voices — the fictional, the historical — mingled with the voices from my own family. I pay homage by paying attention. — Nancy Posey

Here are some poems that I know you will enjoy.

Or Maybe the Day After That

I’m tired of thinking about Tara,
trying to save her for God knows what.
I’m tired of plenty
after all those months
of making do.
Sometimes I miss boiled turnips
and dirt under my nails.
I’m tired of dresses
made to order, petticoats
and ball gowns,
so tired I could rip these curtains
from the windows too.
I’m too tired to bear anyone’s grief
but my own,
tired of apologizing
for misplaced jealousy.
I don’t care if I have to loosen
my corsets after a hearty meal,
one I cooked myself.
Right now I have no plans
to make plans. Instead,
I’m going to sit right here
at the foot of the stairs
and have a good cry,
and I don’t care if anyone
gives a damn or not.
Maybe tomorrow, my thoughts
will come clearer—or
maybe the day after that.

Getting Away

Roots and wings, her mama always said,

Roots and wings, parroting something clever

she had heard from other wiser mothers,

but with her timing off, or just her common

sense. She never knew just which to bestow

when. As they started school, crying,

clinging to her skirts, she offered wings,

shooing them into strange new classrooms

sniffling, but when they wished to date,

to drive, she held tight, packing the soil tight

against their roots, shaping their branches

with twine. When they needed her

for goodnight prayers and nursery rhymes,

she insisted that they learn to entertain

themselves; when they begged to spend

the night with friends, she wept and claimed

they did not love her, leaving her alone

like that. No wonder then, that when they

met a friend, a man, anyone who showed

them kindness, they clung, believing every

word. No wonder still they left that house

the first chance they found, like desparate

passengers, rowing the lifeboat away

from the foundering ship, sawing at knots

that bound them with their teeth if necessary.

Feet

“I grant I never saw a goddess go;

my mistress when she walks treads on the ground.”

--William Shakespeare

Heavy footed, even back when I didn’t

weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet,

I could never slip up on anyone. I clomped

when barefoot, and in high heels, I clicked.

No one could accuse me of not trying,

though. Aware of more graceful girls,

I aspired—to no avail—to steal, unnoticed,

into their ranks but lived and breathed—

and walked—the personification of

two left feet. Dances were no different:

I trampled on the toes of luckless boys,

even tripping over my own two feet.

What vast relief, when I discovered poetry,

to find there feet content to trip along

as I directed; dactyls, iambs, trochees

all do my bidding, with unmatched grace.

Poet of the Day: Nancy Coats Posey

Nancy Posey is a firecracker of a woman. I met her through the NC English Teachers Association a few years back and admired her style. (I think she was wearing snazzy boots!) Former a high school English teacher, she now teaches at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, where she has organized a poetry symposium featuring Cathy Smith Bowers, Joseph Bathanti, and other excellent NC poets. She's an organizer, an energizer, and, yes, a POET. Her chapbook won the online contest sponsored by Robert Brewer's and this year was published. She is the kind of teacher our public schools can ill afford to lose. I wish we had more Nancy Posey's in classrooms across the state.

Nancy's first book, Let the Lady Speak was recently published. To order, please go to www.highlandcreekbooks.com/lettheladyspeak/index.html.

From the Introduction: As the eldest of five daughters, the third in five generations of first-born daughters, I was never discouraged from finding my voice or speaking my mind. This particular group of poems came together as I imagined not only what my grandmothers and great grandmothers might have to say, but other women in history and literature as well. I am most fortunate, too, that I do not have to imagine my own mother’s soft-spoken voice. I just have to stop and listen. A voracious reader, I worked my way through the biographies during some of my years in elementary, while I have found many of my fictional characters just as real. Always interested in considering the other point of view, therefore, I was just as curious about what Lady Macbeth or Scarlet O’Hara might have to say as Amelia Earhart or Anne Frank. I have a button pinned on the board beside my computer desk that reads “I’m a Good Listener!” Some days, if I listen closely, I hear some of those voices — the fictional, the historical — mingled with the voices from my own family. I pay homage by paying attention. — Nancy Posey

Here are some poems that I know you will enjoy.

Getting Away

Roots and wings, her mama always said,

Roots and wings, parroting something clever

she had heard from other wiser mothers,

but with her timing off, or just her common

sense. She never knew just which to bestow

when. As they started school, crying,

clinging to her skirts, she offered wings,

shooing them into strange new classrooms

sniffling, but when they wished to date,

to drive, she held tight, packing the soil tight

against their roots, shaping their branches

with twine. When they needed her

for goodnight prayers and nursery rhymes,

she insisted that they learn to entertain

themselves; when they begged to spend

the night with friends, she wept and claimed

they did not love her, leaving her alone

like that. No wonder then, that when they

met a friend, a man, anyone who showed

them kindness, they clung, believing every

word. No wonder still they left that house

the first chance they found, like desparate

passengers, rowing the lifeboat away

from the foundering ship, sawing at knots

that bound them with their teeth if necessary.

Feet

“I grant I never saw a goddess go;

my mistress when she walks treads on the ground.”

--William Shakespeare

Heavy footed, even back when I didn’t

weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet,

I could never slip up on anyone. I clomped

when barefoot, and in high heels, I clicked.

No one could accuse me of not trying,

though. Aware of more graceful girls,

I aspired—to no avail—to steal, unnoticed,

into their ranks but lived and breathed—

and walked—the personification of

two left feet. Dances were no different:

I trampled on the toes of luckless boys,

even tripping over my own two feet.

What vast relief, when I discovered poetry,

to find there feet content to trip along

as I directed; dactyls, iambs, trochees

all do my bidding, with unmatched grace.

April Poet of the Day: Cathy Smith Bowers

What better way to begin National Poetry Month than with a poem by North Carolina's current Poet Laureate, Cathy Smith Bowers. Today Cathy and I will be reading together at Caldwell Community College in Hudson, NC. We admire each other's poetry and enjoy each other's company.

Cathy was born in the small town of Lancaster, S.C.,one of six children born to a mill worker and a housewife. She received her bachelor's degree in English in 1972 and a master's degree in English in 1976, both from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C.

In 1973 Cathy started her career as a high school English teacher in her native South Carolina. She worked there for ten years before becoming an English instructor at Queens University in Charlotte. She also served as director of composition from 1989–1995 and as poet-in-residence from 1996–2004. She is currently on the faculty for Queens' M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program, UNC Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program and at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C.

She is the author of four books: The Love that Ended Yesterday in Texas (inaugural winner of the Texas Tech University Press First Book Competition, 1992); Traveling in Time of Danger (Iris Press, 1999), A Book of Minutes (Iris Press, 2004), andThe Candle I Hold Up to See You (Iris Press, 2009).

For a video of Cathy reading "Snow," please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0SHHEZaAO4.

A SOUTHERN RHETORIC

"It's a sight in this world
the things in this world
there are to see!" my mother says
as she hurries between the stove
and Sunday table. She is just back
from vacation. Happy.
Talking mountains. Talking rivers.
Big cedars and tidal bores.
When I tease her for redundancy,
her face glows like a sturgeon moon
risen above fat buttery atolls
of biscuits, steaming promontory
of roast. She shakes her finger
in my face and scolds me good:
"Girl, don't you forget who it was
learned you to talk."
Amazing she would want
to lay claim to these syllables
piling up like railroad salvage
when I speak, to these words slow as hooves
dredging from the wet of just-plowed fields.
I watch her turn, embarrassed, to the sink,
to the pots and pans she will scrub
to a gleam so bright we can see ourselves
as if the two of us stared back
from the lost rhetoric of memory.
From the little house, the crib where
she bent each day, naming
for me the world where words always fail,
warranting, now and then,
those few extra syllables,
some things spoken twice.

First appeared in Poetry, later in Cathy's first book, The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas.