Cover art by Dwane Powell
This year's North Carolina Literary Review arrived during the summer and I must have spent hours reading through it. The subect this year is Humor, which I already knew, since I was interviewed by Prof. James Smith, a NC native who teaches at Armstrong State University in Savannah. I never really thought my poetry was humorous, but Jim was able to ferret some humor out of it, and I enjoyed working with him on the interview. Dr. Margaret Bauer, the editor, worked with both of us to get the interview just right, especially impressive, since we were coming in under the deadline. This Review is well worth a subscription. It's full of delights, both literary and graphic. The description on its homepage only hints at what lies in store for readers:
North Carolina Literary Review (NCLR) publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by and interviews with North Carolina writers, and articles and essays about North Carolina writers, literature, and literary history and culture.
A cross between a scholarly journal and a literary magazine, NCLR has won numerous awards and citations, including three from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals: the Best New Journal award in 1994, the Best Journal Design award in 1999, and the Parnassus Award for Significant Editorial Achievement in 2007.
The 2008 issue includes an audio component to complement the issue's special feature section on North Carolina Humor: The Old Mirth State. The dual CD-set called Mirth Carolina Laugh Tracks includes music and readings by some of North Carolina's funniest favorites. We thank the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for funding the production of these CDs.
NCLR is published annually by the English Department, the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at East Carolina University and by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.
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Among the multitude of poetry and prose, I was particularly taken with a poem by my friend Catherine Carter. She has a fine wit about her and a train-load of poetic skill to go along with it.
EGGCORNS
“The word eggcorn was coined collectively by the linguists. . . someone had written egg corn instead of acorn. ..[T]he substitution involved[s] more than just ignorance: an acorn is shaped more or less like an egg; and it is a seed, just like grains of corn. . . . The crucial element is that the new form makes sense. . . more sense than the original form in many cases.” Chris Waigl, http://eggcorns.lascribe.net
Making perfect
sense, if different
sense, their young users wonder
hallways, nip problems in the butt,
get past me by a hare’s breath.
Eggcorns lighten the daze
of reading and grating: free-raging,
they are liminal, lycanthropic, changing
from the gecko. They are deep-seeded
language disseminating
itself; they are words on the move,
like water hurrying downhill to slack
some internal thirst, but not averse
to a pause on the way
for an eddy, a sudden swirl
to enjoy a mute point
or to party hardy.
And they are what I bring
home to you, who love them
too, who are yourself forever
knew and ongoing as live
language, live water,
try though I do
to take you for granite.
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Raised by wolves on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Catherine Carter now directs the English education Western Carolina University (if you want to be an English teacher, she’s probably the one to call.) Her first book of poems, The Memory of Gill (LSU Press, 2006) won the Roanoke-Chowan award in 2007. Her work has also been nominated for a 2008 Pushcart Prize.
(Catherine Carter reading at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh)
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