Green Cloth and Julianna Baggott

Bring me all your happiness,
you happy people.
All your happiness will come to me.
I will wrap it in a green cloth,
So I can keep it away from the hands of the sad. -LS -Sugar Loaf Elementary School

----------------------------------------------------
Here's an email from the always surprising, talented, energetic, off-the-wall (sometimes) Julianna Baggott, one our own UNCG's MFA graduates, now teaching at FSU. Teachers and students, listen up! This sounds like fun!
(www.juliannabaggott.com)



www.PRINCEofFENWAYPARK.com
Baggott and Bode's Newest News!
by
well, Baggott and Bode, of course!

Inside this Newest News Newsletter:

National Writing Contest!
Julianna Baggott and N.E. Bode have teamed up to host a writing contest!
Teachers and Media Specialists! Sign up now! Details below and
more info available at: www.princeoffenwaypark.com Prince of Fenway Park cover

AND ...
will there REALLY be
free copies of
THE PRINCE OF FENWAY PARK?

(Yes, my friends. Oh, yes! Details below.)




Plus:
A coupon: Verve and Zingy Creativity at 50% off!
(Look out for: Next Month's Sale on Anxiety and Sloth currently overstocked!)

And as always:
READ THE FINE PRINT

1) National Writing Contest

Teachers and Media Specialists, sign up for a NATIONAL WRITING CONTEST.

All who sign up will be given the SECRET WRITING PROMPT (one that will have to do with this year's theme -- Baseball and Magic!) on January 5th.

On March 1st, teachers and media specialists report back. If all of their students participated in the contest, they will receive special certification - plus a DVD Inside the Magical Brains of Baggott and Bode -- about reading, writing, baseball, magic, and the wild imagination.

Teachers can also email FAMOUS FIRST SENTENCES from their class to be posted on The Prince of Fenway Park web site for all the world to see!

We believe that writing isn't about winning and losing contests. It's about letting loose the imagination and jumping into the creative process. To that end, we aren't reading entries and picking winners. We are rewarding participation. Our hope is to get as many kids writing as possible. We will be listing ALL participating schools across the country on this web site!

For more INFO, go to www.PRINCEofFENWAYPARK.com



OR SIGN UP NOW: Write Julianna Baggott an email at jcbaggott@aol.com.
Give us the name of your school, city and state. That's it! You're in!

2) Free Copies of The Prince of Fenway Park?

We will be giving away 100 free copies of the hardcover of The Prince of Fenway Park to teachers, media specialists, and kids. Want to get one for yourself? Here's how to qualify.

Teachers and Media Specialists

To get a free copy of The Prince of Fenway Park for your classroom or library:prince of fenway park pooka

a. Write an email to Julianna Baggott, the author, explaining why your students might really love the book as a read aloud - whether you're drawn to the book because you have a school full of BASEBALL fans (Red Sox fans or not) or a school of readers who love MAGICAL stories or if you have a students who might really relate to a biracial narrator whose identity makes him the perfect person to break the curse.

b. Promise to write a review of the novel and post that review on amazon.com and bn.com within one month of receiving the book.

c. Teachers who win a freebie can also qualify for a follow-up Q and A with the author via speaker phone or email AND will receive a DVD of Baggott and Bode talking to kids about reading, writing, and running with the wild imagination.

Please keep in mind that you can nominate a student for his or her own FREE COPY!

(The Prince of Fenway Park comes out on March 24th. Free copies will likely be available before the official pulication date!)




HEY, KIDS!

Prince of Fenway Park coverTo get a free copy of The Prince of Fenway Park of your very own, you need to have a teacher or media specialist sponsor you.

1. Your sponsor has to write an email saying why you're a smart pick for a freebie. (Only one student nomination per teacher/ media specialist.)

2. You and your sponsor have to promise to work together to write and post a review on amazon.com and bn.com within one month of receiving the book.



P.S. A TEACHERS GUIDE FOR THE PRINCE OF FENWAY PARK IS COMING SOON!



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Contacting You From Baggott and Bode Headquarters

TO SIGN UP FOR THE NATIONAL WRITING CONTEST, SEND AN EMAIL TO
JULIANNA BAGGOTT -- JCBAGGOTT@AOL.COM.

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Good Morning, Moon

Moon keeper
Bring me all your craters.
Keep away all the cold memories.
So I can be free of nightmares,
That haunt me at midnight. -AB--Sugar Loaf Elementary School
___________________________________________

One of our daughter's favorite books was GOODNIGHT, MOON. I can't begin to estimate the number of times I read it to her. I still love it. And the moon.
Two nights ago, my husband and I sat beside the woodstove and watched through our window the moon rise over the pines. By then it was a waning moon, looking like a big nibble had been taken out of it, but it was still bright and imagination-stirring. And it moved so quickly. Soon it had vanished from the window.

I like the poem above so much that I thought I'd write my own, as a way to connect with it and its author.

Moon Keeper,
my window
holding the rising moon,
till it escapes
floating over us
at midnight,
our bedroom alight
with its passing.
Moon Keeper,
Star-keeper,
the sky
where the Milky way
lives, rings
of Saturn
and the Andromeda
Galaxy, so much
out there I can't
begin to imagine
how much
the Sky Keeper
keeps.

Here's a weird photo I took while we were in Budapest, Hungary last month. I wanted a shot of the full moon, but the bridge where I was standing was constantly shaking from all the traffic, so the moon looks like it's streaking across the sky, along with all the other lights from the bridge. I guess you could say this photo is not much of a Moon Keeper!

Christmas gift lists!

------------------------------------------------
Thought keeper
Bring me all your thoughts,
you thinkers.
Bring me all your brain storms,
that I can put them in a safe.
Only for you to see. -SD (Sugar Loaf Elementary School)

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

If you could have seen how many gift catalogs we lugged home from the post office this morning, you'd know that each year Christmas shopping begins earlier and earlier. Well, I have some gift suggestions that I will be sharing with you over the next few weeks. How about books? How about poetry?
Speaking of which, how about some books by Carole Boston Weatherford? She has just published a new book, Becoming Billie Holiday, but she has many others suitable for all ages. Here are some of them arranged on my bed. I will be posting more about Carole's books and other books by NC writers just waiting for you to add them to your Christmas gift list.

Sweet Words from Sugar Loaf Elementary School

Last week I received a cornucopia of poems from fifth graders at Sugar Loaf School. This is the time of year to use the word "cornucopia." Thanksgiving is nearly here, and just look at all those pumpkins, squash, and end of season vegetables and fruit brimming the grocery stalls and fruit stands! Now, poetry is brimming over my comment box! And I'm thankful for it. I promised the Sugar Loaf students a letter, and it will follow, but let me also say that each day from now till January 1, I will be using one of the 48 poems sent in my Nov. 12 comment box as the header to my post. I'll begin tomorrow, so even if you don't read anything else on the post, read the poem!

Dear 5th graders,
Thank you again for your fabulous poems. I feel like I've already had Thanksgiving Dinner! The photo above is of me and one of our 5 dogs, Byron. We call him Lord Byron because he acts like he's the lord of the family. I'm holdiing his head so he won't jump up and kiss me. I wasn't in the mood right then for a doggy kiss.

Your poems do what I always ask my writing students to do --to "bring it." And by that I mean to bring what matters to them to their poems. You have gone one step further by asking your readers to bring their joy, their sadness, their laughter, their hope, just to name a few, to you and you will make a poem of it and keep it safe. Or, in the case of Moonkeeper, you will keep the cold memories away so that you can be free of nightmares. Wow! I like that. And you know, right now we have a full moon, so this poem seems really appropriate. But then, each of these poems is approriate and on target because each has its own special voice, and I have taken a great deal of pleasure in reading them. As I mention above, each day I will post one at the top of my blogpost, and I will probably say a few words about the poem. By the time I've finished posting all of these--New Year's Day--maybe you will have another batch to send me!
I'll be sending you the surprise I promised. It may not arrive till after Thanksgiving, but it will definitely be there before Christmas vacation.
I hope the rest of your semester at Sugar Loaf goes well. You are my "Sugar Poets," and I congratulate you and your teacher(s) for the good work you've done.
Your friend, Kathryn Byer

Fifth grade poems!

Please go to the comment section of The One Minute Writer! Aren't these fabulous? I will be featuring them soon on a real post, with some photos, I hope.

The One Minute Writer

Go to oneminutewriter.blogspot.com. Give it a try! Teachers and students of all ages could make it a part of their day.
Thank you C. Beth. And thank you for your comments on earlier sites,partiularly on Marcia Long's poem.

North Carolina Literary Review

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.


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


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.

------------
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)

Pembroke Magazine #40: Rosas vivas en mi huerto

Anyone familiar with PEMBROKE MAGAZINE (http://www.uncp.edu/pembrokemagazine/) knows that it pushes the boundaries of the possible, giving us special issues devoted, for example, to African-American literature, American Indian literature, and now Hispanic/Latino(a) literature---all the while including many of our own North Carolina writers, along with reviews, commentaries, and scholarship. The wizard behind this magazine is none other than Shelby Stephenson, award-winning poet and down-home NC picker and singer. This new issue is yet another cause for celebration. How does Shelby and his staff pull this off? The magazine is one of the state's treasures.

So is Shelby. He recently won the Bellday Poetry Prize, for "Family Matters:
Homage to July, the Slave Girl," about which you will hear more in a forthcoming post as well as on our ncarts.org site.



The new issue of Pembroke Magazine features Hispanic/Latino(a) writers, with Lilianan Wendorff as Guest Editor. Included among the authors are James Applewhite; Reinhold Grimm; Veronica Grossi; Judy Hogan; Debra Kaufman; Kathryn Kirkpatrick; Jose Latour; Susan Lefler; Glenna Luschei; Julio Ortega; Marty Silverthorne; Mark Smith-Soto; Nancy Tilly; Alma Luz Villanueva. Interviews: Ted Kooser; Mel Waters.

.
(Liliana Wendorf)


INTRODUCTION by Liliana Wendorff (Excerpt)

We are delighted to introduce a special edition of Pembroke Magazine devoted to Hispanic/Latino(a) Literature. The prestigious, nationally known Pembroke Magazine historically has been at the forefront of innovation. It has concentrated on finding the overlooked topics and authors, and exposing them to a wider audience. It has dedicated issues to multiple kinds of literature as well as to national and international artists of different ages and backgrounds.



Pembroke Magazine has chosen to seize this singular moment to open the door on literature that may not have resonated with our audience, even in the recent past. This is an appropriate time in history for awareness of the commonality of human stories. Different ethnic groups are currently trying to penetrate the minds of each other. Our ideas become more comprehensible to what was the Other. And just as copper and zinc form a new metal, so do we form an alloy through the conversation of minds. Literature and criticism has always been at the forefront of this re-enlightenment. As nations become more global and interdependent, knowledge of other prisms on reality will feed the desire for understanding.

The authors included in this edition are representative of many different facets of the crystal of fresh reflections. Hispanic/Latino(a) literature is represented here by authors from different corners of the Hispanic/Latino(a) world: Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Spain, and the United States. The themes are equally eclectic. They range from the anticipated themes of immigration, assimilation, exile, alienation, and fragmented identities to romance and metaphysics. We hope this exposure will tantalize readers to further explorations or, perhaps more importantly, self-reflection.
-----------------------------


This is one of my favorite poems from the magazine, by Carlos Javier Morales, who has published 5 books of poetry and teaches in Madrid.

FUERA DE PROGRAMA

Aun quedan rosas vivas in mi huerto:
ven para verlas juntos.
Ya se que no te sobra ni un instante
en tu apretada agenda;
pero ven, que is la vida,
que ahora quiere ensenarnos su hermosura
y entonarnos su fragil melodia,
para que nunca olvides
que aqui tienes tu casa.

OUT OF PLANNING

(Author's Translation)

There are yet living roses in my garden.
Come here. We will watch them together.
I know that no time remains in your timetable;
but come here today: it is the life,
that now wants to show us its whole great beauty
and to intone for us its fagile melody.
And so you will never forget
that here is your home.




(Shelby Stephenson, editor of PEMBROKE MAGAZINE)

Barack Obama, the Poet?

Regardless of the way you voted last Tuesday, I think readers of this blog will find the article below pretty interesting. Turns out we have a President-elect who wrote poetry when he was in college and not bad poetry at that, I'd say, despite Harold Bloom's condescension. If he'd been a student of mine, I'd have thought, hmm, there are some things here we an work with. Who knows what might happen if he has the desire to continue? I shudder to think of what Bloom would have said about my 19 year old's poems turned in to my first writing class.

So former President Jimmy Carter is "the worst poet in the United States," according to gatekeeper Bloom? Well, he might open The New Yorker on any given week and find some poetry far worse ---or the American Poetry Review. This does not mean that I have not come upon poems in The New Yorker that I wish I had written. It simply means that I have also come across some stinkers. I recall William Matthews telling me many years ago that there wasn't as much good poetry out there as people (mostly poets) wanted to think. And the best, most meaningful, poetry is not always in the prestigious journals where Bloom no doubt expects to find it.


(Harold Bloom)

As for Bloom's closing advice, how many writers have stories of being told just that--don't go on with it? Maxine Kumin, a poet I deeply admire has a similar story about her first poems being insulted by a prof. when she was in college. Allen Tate told me nothing was happening in mine, when I was a student at UNCG. I was too polite to shrug, but I did so inwardly. The truth is, young (or middle-aged or elderly) writers who have the passion to write usually don't ask their teachers if they should go on with it. They know they have to.


(Maxine Kumin)



Obama as Poet
(www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/prespoetry/bo.htm)


When President-elect Obama was a 19-year-old student at Occidental College, he published two poems in the spring 1982 issue of Feast, the school's literary magazine. The first poem, "Pop," appears to capture a moment between the young Obama and his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham. The bond between the two is reinforced at the end of the poem by the framing and reflective properties of Pop's glasses.

"Pop"

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I’m sure he’s unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies...
But I don’t care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ‘cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses
And know he’s laughing too.

When asked to comment on the merit of "Pop," Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities and English at Yale University, described it as “not bad—a good enough folk poem with some pathos and humor and affection.... It is not wholly unlike Langston Hughes, who tended to imitate Carl Sandburg." [1] Obama's poetry, Bloom makes clear, is much superior to the poetry of former President Jimmy Carter (Bloom calls Carter "literally the worst poet in the United States").

President-elect Obama's second poem, "Underground," is more exotic and obscure:

"Underground"

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

Bloom feels that "Underground" is the better of Obama's two poems, reminiscent of some of D. H. Lawrence's poetry: “I think it is about some sense of chthonic forces, just as Lawrence frequently is—some sense, not wholly articulated, of something below, trying to break through.” [2]

While President-elect Obama's poetry displays some signs of talent, by choosing politics over poetry he made, like the other poetry-writing presidents before him, the right career choice. As Bloom notes: “If I had been shown these poems by one of my undergraduates and asked, Shall I go on with it?, I would have rubbed my forehead and said, On the whole, my dear, probably not. Your future is not as a person of letters.“

Notes

1. All quotations by Harold Bloom from Rebecca Mead's "Obama, Poet," (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/07/02/
070702ta_talk_mead, The New Yorker, July 2, 2007).

2. To read other assessments of Obama's poetry, many less positive than Harold Bloom's, see "Obama's Poetry Skills Draw Scrutiny" (http://media.www.oxyweekly.com/media/storage/paper1200/news/2007/04/04/News/
Obamas.Poetry.Skills.Draw.Scrutiny-2822022.shtml, The Occidental Weekly, April 4, 2007).

NC Woods

This comment came from Marcia Long in response to my post of John York's poem, "Naming the Constellations." The "simple, meager" poem that Marcia describes is not at all meager. Its simplicity is that of haiku, and I particularly love the simmering pines, remembering how the pines I grew up among smelled, especially on hot days. Walking in the woods was my favorite past-time, next to reading. Marcia could play with lineation to enhance the poem's mood and rhythm.

-----------


I am a high school English teacher and a fan or yours. I thoroughly enjoyed John's poem, especially the line "a way to walk in our ancestors’ boots." The woods here in NC inspire me like the constellations inspire John. I love to walk my dogs and just sit and stare at the sky and the towering pines and imagine how our ancestors walked among these same trees so many years ago.

The following is a simple, meager poem, written in praise of my "spot":

"NC Woods"

These woods embrace me with the warm, sweet smell of simmering pines, whose branches have an old, old story to tell.

Marcia

------------------
Anyone have any suggestions for Marcia as to how to work in some line-breaks? It might be interesting to compare results! And I'm hoping that Marcia will begin to write some more about that old, old story the pines have to tell.

Nicole

I always look to see if I have any comments at the end of my posts! The one below appeared after my Autumn in Budapest post, in which I asked folks to send me some autumn poems. It's by Nicole, who has a sprightly blog called Coley's Life: http://coleyirene.blogspot.com/.

About herself, she says," My students say I don't seem like other adults who are pretty "boring." " If you visit her blog, you'll see why. The poem below gave me another take on "fall." Maybe I'll share my own "fall" poem about turning 50 some years back! But it's not as light-hearted as Nicole's. Even so, it always makes listeners laugh at my own take on "falling."

Here is Nicole, on left, with her sister Jaimie.




Ms. Byer, I am an English teacher at Green Hope High School in Cary, NC. My English Department chair sent me your blog link. I have plans to move to Hungary this summer for at least a year to teach English, so I was thrilled to find your postings (it's so beautiful!). Anyway, I wrote a fall poem that I thought appropriate:

fall

this fall
I am not falling in love
Nor am I technically falling
anywhere
I have no desire
to make imprints of leaves
copy their patterns
die like they do
I will
wear brown
wear orange
eat pumpkin, eat sweet potatoes
enjoy bonfires
apple bob
dress up for halloween (I was a tree)
listen to sufjan
embrace change
and feel the ache
in my stomach
for the turning
of winter
and warmer clothes
than I've ever worn.

Collaborations

I sit here with my laptop looking out through the fog at the the closest trees, their leaves burning through the mist. The last few days have been busy ones, with a long drive back from Davidson Tuesday night, radio on to NPR stations along the way, excitement building with each state's projections being called. I arrived home just before midnight and Obama's victory statement before the throngs at Grant Park. My husband and I shared a glass of wine, and I celebrated being back home safely, after four days of rejuvenation in Davidson and Charlotte. ( Creative rejuvenation---don't ask me about physical! I spent most of yesterday catching up on my sleep!)

Collaborations with kindred artistic spirits are always rejuvenating, awakening the dormant parts of ourselves that the daily grind has sent underground. This collaboration gathered together an old friend and WCU alumna, soprano Jacquelyn Culpepper (www.jacquelineculpepper.com), pianist Phillip Bush (www.phillipbush.com, me, and composer Kenneth Frazelle (www.kennethfrazelle.com, whose "Appalachian Songbook" we performed, along with piano selections from his "Wildflowers." Well, I didn't perform the music, I read poems in between the sets. We rehearsed all Saturday afternoon, and I came out of the recital hall marveling at how hard musicians work!



The performance itself was spine-tingling, if I do say so myself, but the real engagement with the poetry and music came in the preparations leading up to the program. Weaving poetry, song, and piano into a more or less seamless fabric, and just a day before the performance itself, was challenging and, yes, instructive for me as a poet who is used to walking up to the lectern and doing pretty much what I please with my poetry. This time I had to weave it into a musical structure, and I had to re-read the poems numerous times, so often that I came to realize that these old poems from "Wildwood Flower" and "Black Shawl" still live for me, and I hope for the audiences who came to hear us perform. Collaborations do that! It's good for writers to take part in them, to join creative forces with musicians, dancers, visual artists and create something new and exciting. Speaking of exciting, having the composer, Kenneth Frazelle on hand for the Davidson performance, was icing on the cake. The Q & A afterward brought out some fascinating information about the composition of these songs. WDAV radio interviewed Jacque, Ken, and Phillip the day before the performance. You can find that interview at this link: http://www.wdav.org/2_134_0.cfm.


(Jacque and me after the Davidson performance)

The Davidson campus was beautiful, the leaves brilliant, many of them spiraling down to the walkways. My room at the guest house had a beautiful quilt framed on the wall. (Vicki, what's the name of this pattern? I'm asking novelist Vicki Lane. She knows her quilts!) The staff at the guest house was gracious beyond words--thank you Kelly and Sisi. I met Jason Koo, the young poet teaching the poetry workshop at the college, and I re-connected with longtime friends Bob Cumming, Lou Green, and Tony Abbot. My friend and former English Dept. colleague Elizabeth Evans, recently moved from Cullowhee to The Pines, prepared an elegant supper for me, after which we had a good visit, something I've missed since her departure.



(Novelist Vicki Lane, who knows her quilts, says she thinks this pattern is Pineapple Cactus from the thirties.)

On Election Day we gathered in Charlotte to give two performances as part of Saint Peter's Episcopal Church's Chamber Music Series. If you go to http://cmsp.wordpress.com/ you will learn about this series set in the beautiful sanctuary of St. Peter's. Ken Frazelle was again present at our evening performance, introducing his compositions before we performed. Talk about goose-bumps! This performance captivated me completely. I think all three of us were in top form that evening. I was swept away by the music. A recording of the event is being prepared for WDAV and as soon as it's available, I will provide the link to it.


(Pianist Phillip Bush)


(Composer Kenneth Frazelle)

An additional treat was meeting Elaine Spallone, the Executive Director of the Chamber Music Series. Jacque and I serendipitously met her at the Italian restaurant where we decided to have lunch between performances. She is also a potter, with a fabulous blog, elainespallonepottery.blogspot.com. I'll be adding her blog to my bloglist.



(Elaine Spallone, after lunch)




(Jacque Culpepper)

I'm slowly coming down from the high of my Davidson/Charlotte experience. I look out my window and see that by now the fog is lifting from the valley. Looks like another beautiful day shaping up here in Cullowhee.

Time Out

(Jacquelyn Culpepper)

I will be away for the next four days doing a poetry/music program using Kenneth Frazelle's Appalachian Songbook with soprano Jacquelyn Culpepper at Davidson College. We will take the program to Charlotte on Election day, and I will resume my blog on Wednesday, the fifth. In the meantime, to learn more about Jacque, go her website--http://www.jacquelynculpepper.com/.

Be sure to come back next week for photos from this event and more NC literary news and writers.

End of October

Here is a spine-tingling poem for the season, by my friend Isabel Zuber, poet and novelist. It is from her as yet unpublished manuscript of poems, RED LILY.


END OF OCTOBER


Tonight's their time but they came early,
have been here all day, watching
from among the trees, rustling faded grass.
They speak in whispers too low for sound,
seem to approve the way we've let the place
go to wild and ruin, its hedges pokeweed--
bright, beautiful poison--
tangles of rose, honeysuckle.

Clouds come and go as I hang out the clothes
with them still observing it all. Then later
I sense what could have been their breath
as I unpin warmed white sheets,
sun-fragrant towels, the shirts.

Do they think they've been summoned?
I know better than to do that, yet
strain to hear voices in the leaves.
"Why have you left me?" they call.
But to the evening's strange
and rising wind I say nothing. They linger
for any who will listen but by now
they have no differences and
all their smiles are grave.




(Isabel Zuber)

Prodigious Honesties: A Test for all the Candidates

This is a replay of a "Language Matters" column I wrote two years ago. I updated it a bit.

PRODIGIOUS HONESTIES


The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley declared poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” These days we snicker at such an inflated claim for poets, or for any other voices claiming that language used well and with poetic intensity matters at all. And yet, what can we say of the real “legislators” of our world? Their world of spin and double-talk? Now that another election is upon us, the t.v. ads, the debates, and the bumper stickers, I’m left, yet again, wondering what qualities a leader worthy of our nation should embody.

This is a difficult question to answer. We exist surrounded by television, cell phones, computers, ipods, and palm pilots, all sending signals that can either confound or instruct. We watch the images of men and women on the screen professing this or that value or policy. How can we tell if they are worthy of our respect, not to mention our vote?

I think I have found a way, thanks to a recent speech by former University of Chicago President Don Randel. He begins his speech by quoting noted poet Richard Wilbur, whose poem “Clearness” begins this way: “There is a poignancy in all things clear,/In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning./Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water/We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.” Mr. Randel then laments that we live in an age of “prodigious dishonesties,” but his solution does not require more classes with “ethics” in the title. “Perhaps,” he declares,” we should require everyone to study poetry.”

He concludes his speech with a revolutionary idea! One that might help us focus our attention more accurately on the men and women whose faces we see in the media: “The next time you see a face on the front page of the newspaper... you might ask yourself whether the subject reads much poetry.”

I don’t think it’s asking too much that our leaders read poetry, that they be able to speak our language clearly and precisely, nor do I think it is asking too much of them to be well-read in the texts that our canon of great literature has given us. After all they contribute, as Mr. Randel observes, to our understanding of what it means to be a human being and how we ought to behave in relation to one another.

When we have leaders who proclaim that they read nothing much at all, what does that say about them? And about us? When those candidates who do value education, literary culture, and artistic achievements are called "elitists," what does that suggest about our values?

I suggest that as Election Day bears down upon us, we apply Dr. Randel’s litmus test to all the candidates asking for our votes. Or dare we? Might we come away disappointed that no one, not a single solitary one, would pass muster?

If so, we face a future worse than any of us could imagine, one in which language is used not to draw our attention back to those “prodigious honesties” that the poet expresses, but to deceive, confuse, and seduce us into supporting policies that will ultimately undermine and silence our own voices. Then the word “democracy” will have been robbed of all meaning.

NC Student Poet Laureate Awards

(At the annual NCETA convention in Winston-Salem this Friday, with the three Student Poet Laureate Winners: from left Anuja Acharya, Katherine Indermaur, and Sarah Bruce.)

Last year my family and I helped endow a new award through the NC English Teachers Association, the North Carolina Student Poet Laureate Awards for both high school and middle school students. I felt that poetry needed a special award to take its place beside the Wade Edwards Fiction Award and the essay awards handed out every year at the NCETA annual convention. I'm delighted that now the current state Poet Laureate will serve each year as final judge in the two categories, selecting the students who will serve as our state Student Poet Laureates until the following year. Students are invited to submit, through their teachers, their poems, which a preliminary member of NCETA will read, in order to make final recommendations to the current Laureate. This year my preliminary reader was John York, whose splendid poem, "Naming the Constellations," recently won the NC Poetry Society's Poet Laureate award and was featured on this blog.

His responses to the work submitted matched mine; thus, we were delighted to be able to give this year's Laureate award to "Downtown After Dark" by Katherine Indermaur, second prize to "Death by Chocolate," by Anuja Acharya, and Honorable Mention to "yellow" by Sarah Bruce. All three students were nominated by Priscilla Chappell at Enloe High School in Raleigh and all three spoke of how much Ms. Chappell had opened up the world of poetry to them. We at NCETA and the Arts Council are excited about this new award and the excellent poetry these three young women have given us. We did not have enough entries for middle schoolers this year to have a real competition in that category; next year we hope to have many more submissions from both levels.



(Our first NC Student Poet Laureate, Katherine Indermaur, with her mother, after the NCETA Awards banquet.)



(Our second place winner, Anuja Acharya with her parents.)



(Honorable Mention winner Sarah Bruce with her parents.)

Each student received a cash award, a plaque, and an inscribed copy of my first book of poetry, THE GIRL IN THE MIDST OF THE HARVEST. Their poems will appear on this blog in the next several days.

Autumn in Budapest

(Autumn fire in the leaves as we walk through the Pest side of the Danube on our first morning in Budapest.)

Being in Europe during October brought back my memories of reading the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke when I was in College, in particular his early work from the Book of Pictures. Here is his poem "Herbst." (Autumn)


Herbst

Rainer Maria Rilke

Die Blätter fallen, fallen wie von weit,
als welkten in den Himmeln ferne Gärten;
sie fallen mit verneinender Gebärde.

Und in den Nächten fällt die schwere Erde
aus allen Sternen in die Einsamkeit.

Wir alle fallen. Diese Hand da fällt.
Und sieh die andre an: es ist in allen.

Und doch ist Einer, welcher dieses Fallen
unendlich sanft in seinen Händen hält.


AUTUMN

trans. Bertram Kottmann

The leaves are falling, falling as from far,
as if distant gardens withered in the skies;
they are falling with a denying gesture.

And in the nights the heavy earth falls
from all the stars into solitude.

All of us fall. This hand here falls.
And look at the other: it is in all.

And yet there is one, who holds this falling
immensely gently in his hands.

AUTUMN DAY

(Thanks to John C. Holcome's website,http://www.textetc.com/workshop/wt-rilke-1.html)

A lofty summer! Lord, it's time to lay
encroaching shadows on the sundials now
and let in meadowlands the winds have sway.

Command the fruits to fullness and consign
another two more days of southern heat
to bring them to perfection and secrete
the last of sweetness in the bodied wine.

He who has no house will not rebuild,
and he who is alone will long stay so,
and wake to read, write endlessly, and go
up and down through avenues now filled
with leaves and restlessness, blown to and fro.


Herbsttag

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird Es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.






(Trees near the Citadella, on the hill overlooking the city, where we climbed to see the famous statue of the woman holding the palm wreath, erected after WWII. )

Autumn has stirred my imagination as no other season does. Here is my poem "Alma" from WILDWOOD FLOWER.

ALMA

Two dead leaves
on the table and ice

floats on milk like the ashes
of leaves. Oak
twigs kindle
and fire leaps like a prayer, “Give us

breath.” When I open
the door and breathe deeply
the cold air inflames me.
The fire seizes log after log.
In the garden my husband burns
dead stalks of squash and potatoes.
I sweep my dust into the coals
and our smoke mingles over the orchard.

In autumn I sweep the floor gladly.
I gather the crumbs from the cupboard,
and the rinds of the apples.
When my dustbin grows heavy,
I give what it holds to the fire
and the fire sings its song:

raise your dead
from the earth, make a fire
of their bones,
set them free

to be sky,
to be nothing at all.



(October in the Blue Ridge Mountains)

If you have a favorite autumn poem, why not share it with us on this blog. Or write your own!

Back from Hungary!

This is my first morning back in the US after two wonderful weeks in Hungary. I was delighted to find several comments on the poems by the Basketball Poets and on the splendid poem by John York. No poems from students, though! I've removed comment moderation, so please feel free to send me some responses. Teachers, too! And anyone else who feels inspired by these posts.
I'll be posting photos and stories about my time in Hungary soon. And I'll be responding to the comments left while I was gone.
I hope October is stirring up all sorts of poetic impulses among NC poetry lovers. I'll be sharing a few of my favorite autumn poems over the next few days. Let me know what yours are, ok?

NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award--John York: Springboard # 2

I've been asked to judge many contests over the past few years, but at no time have I been as excited about an entry as about the poem titled "Naming the Constellations," which was among the group sent to me from the NC Poetry Society's Poet Laureate Award finalists. " Who is this poet?" I asked the contest co-ordinator. I didn't find out till weeks later that it was John York, an old friend and one of my favorite poets. Of course, all the entries were submitted anonymously. I had no idea who the author of this poem was. All the more reason to be thrilled when I found out! This poem was published in the NCPS anthology PINESONG this summer. I'm honored to be able to feature it here. John is an English teacher at Penn-Griffin School for the Arts in Greensboro.

Because I am always looking for ways to engage readers and writers, I'd like to suggest some "springboards" from this fabulous poem. For starters---what about naming the constellations? How many of us know them anymore? Go find out about them and stand out at night looking for them, if the light pollution doesn't foil your efforts. Write a poem from what your see or don't see, or a poem springing from the names themselves--and their stories.

Find a line you love from this poem and begin with it; or use it as an epigraph for your own poem. I may do this myself. I find this poem haunting, totally memorable. Let it play in your imagination and see what happens. Then send me your responses through the "comments" link.



(John York)


Naming the Constellations

1

Trace a line from the front
of the Big Dipper’s cup, over to Polaris,
the penny nail on which the Little Dipper swings.
The rest of the sky, even the visible
galaxies fleeing the big bang,
seem to turn on that near nothing of a star.

Then look for Bootes rising
among catalpa blossoms, Aquila hovering
above summer haze, Orion climbing
through unleafing trees, or the Gemini
watching over hoar-frosted mountaintops.
Even if we never venture over desert places

or through winter woods at night,
we need to learn the old names,
Ursa Major, the Great Wain, the Drinking Gourd:
a way to walk in our ancestors’ boots.
We watch the stars as we watch our steps,
looking to take the long way home.

2

When my grandmother read the paper,
there in the back yard, where she watched
the squirrels playing around the eaves
of the barn’s tin roof, she sat on a white chair,
until she eased forward to the crackling
sigh of relieved cane bottom.

It’s a low chair, made for a shorter generation;
either that or the tapering legs rested
once on rockers that wore out.
Little Roy Burgess wove a new seat,
a simple pattern that’s held for decades.
I fended off Uncle Gilbert at the auction

and claimed my inheritance: and sometimes
I ride the chair around the galaxy while I play
my guitar, the jigs and ballads
Great-grandfather fiddled, tonic, dominant,
sub-dominant chords, then back
to the keynote, opening a door to a cornfield at dusk.

And sometimes, walking out on a December night,
I find the Celestial Chair--Orion's rectangle--
his belt, a tin pan spilling,
his sword, corn dropped for the chickens,
Canis Major making a flock of white beaks,
the hens rushing to flashing seed, while Grandma
sits invisible, a dust cloud gathering into a star.

3

Walking down to the bike path, I see
Orion tilting, stretching over
the street from one group of trees to another,
and on the horizon, a white steeple,
shining in front of a trio of skyscrapers—
a Gothic tower, a space ship, a box—

so bright, I can’t find the Pleiades
or the Pole Star. The astronomers know
that the constellations are changing,
the patterns bending, the stars light years apart,
so that Orion may become “the Manacle,”
“the Butterfly,” or something nameless—

all stories lost: our fictions have lasted
for centuries, the narrative lines forming a map,
there for everyone to accept, revise, or reject,
but now we work at obliterating
the sky, smog, ozone, blather and baloney
our children’s final inheritance.

Walking home, I see a row of lights, a constellation
along a hilltop, but so much of what I do
is by dead reckoning, feeling my way
in the dark, until I find a familiar door,
a chair, a book, a place to snudge like a Hobbit,
listening for a tea kettle, snow fall, sleigh bells.

4

What is hardest is walking with a naked
mind into the night, like some earliest
man or woman, leaving behind
the communal fire, the flickering screen,
to go to mountaintop or empty field
and forget our yammering selves.

When I was a country boy, before I read
about Orion, I saw his limbs and belt
and called it all “The Great Box Kite,”
and I held its string as I stood in the alfalfa stubble,
and a strong breeze kept it aloft
long after I went to bed—and it flies

in me still, when I shine like a clear
sky far from city lights,
when I remember the smell of cows
and a chill wind shimmering,
the tug of the string, the letting go,
the silence where everything is born.

Alyssa Miller, Supply Elementary School

Recently, fifth grade student Alyssa Miller received a letter informing her that her Poem Sunkeeper was selected as Second Place in the 2008 Poetry Council of North Carolina Student Contest, Charlotte Young Category.

Alyssa will have the opportunity to read her poem at Poetry Day on Saturday, October 4 at Catawba College in Salisbury. She will receive a copy of Bay Leaves (in which all the winning poems are published), a certificate, and a check for $15 as her Second Place Prize. (See the post below on The Basketball Poets and Assignments.)