North Carolina Literary Review

This just showed up in my email. If you go back a little ways in my posts, you will find my entry on the new NCLR, but after this letter from the staff, I'm going to re-run it underneath, to make things easier for readers.

Dear NCLR readers and writers:

The North Carolina Literary Review staff sends early wishes for a happy
holiday this year. We would also like to suggest to our readers and writers
that the current humor issue, with its complementary CD of readings and
music, would make a wonderful gift for family and friends.

To help ensure a Christmas delivery, send by December 12 a check for $15,
plus $3 for first-class postage, and the address of the recipient. We will
include a note indicating that it is a gift from you.

Send check payable to NCLR and address information to:

Dr. Margaret Bauer, NCLR Editor
Department of English, 2201 Bate Bldg.
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858-4353

Our subscription rates are going up in January, so you may want to subscribe
or renew now as well. See http://www.ecu.edu/nclr/subscrip.htm for an order
form for subscriptions and back issues.

Note: the usual postage rate, as indicated on the order form, is $2, but if
you wish a gift subscription to include the 2008 issue or for each back
issue ordered as a gift, if you want it to arrive by Christmas, again,
please include $3 (per issue) for postage, and we will send your issues
first-class immediately upon receipt of your order.

We invite you to help us celebrate North Carolina¹s writers and literature,
and thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

NCLR staff

--
North Carolina Literary Review
Department of English
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858-4353

www.ecu.edu/nclr
phone: 252-328-1537
fax: 252-328-4889 (to Dr. Margaret Bauer's attention)
Editor: Margaret D. Bauer, Rives Chair of Southern Literature
(BauerM@ecu.edu)



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.




(Catherine Carter reading at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh)

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.