Thinking About the Next Big Bang

(first published in Outlook)


Thinking about the Next Big Bang in the Galaxy at the Edge of Town

In the Galaxy at the edge of town
there is still plenty of fresh air,
space is abundant, light
is spread evenly everywhere.

Children keep rattling wheels
moving forward, the machinery
of produce continues,
seven languages are spoken.

A homeless man seeks shelter,
jacket pulled tight around him,
orbs of eyes concealed
beneath rings of his hat’s brim.

Stockboys wait for beauty
to descend and need them, they dream
constellations in their hands,
spin cans to face the front.

Potentialities, polarities, cosmic
design are all worked out
in the commerce of heavenly bodies.
Everything moves in perpetual orbit.

A man walking between rows
wonders at the infinity of choice
spread out before him, thinks
one day decisions won’t matter.

At closing time they walk
towards the black hole
of windows, afraid of no
gravity but their own.

3 July Events

3 July Events

July is typically a pretty quiet month for poetry in the Hickory area, but this month I'm involved in three big events.

Poetry Hickory featuring Helen Losse and John York, July 12, 6:30 - 8:00, Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse. Open Mic readers are Kim Teague and Brooke Johnson (1 10-minute slot open -- call me (828-234-4266) or email me (asowens1@yahoo.com) if you want it. Writers' Night Out 5:00-6:30.

Poetry Lincolnton featuring myself, M. Scott Douglass, Jonathan K. Rice, Helen Losse, Devona Wyant, Shane Manier, and Morgan DePue, July 15, 7:00, Lincoln Cultural Center (403 East Main St., Lincolnton, NC)

Greatest Writing Prompt Ever, 3-Day Creative Writing Workshop with Scott Owens, at Minetta Lane Center for the Arts and Peace, July 21, 28, and August 4, 270 Union Square, downtown Hickory. This workshop will get you writing and keep you writing for years to come. Appropriate for all genres. Revision and publication will also be discussed. Cost is $75. Email michael.minettalane@gmail.com or call 828-446-4451 to register. For more information, visit http://minettalanecenter.org/events_calendar/

Hickory Poet How-To, Part I

HICKORY POET HOW-TO, PART I
(first published in Outlook)

So, you want to be a poet in Hickory, NC? Many have tried; many have failed; and a perhaps surprisingly large number have done pretty well. A word to the wise, however; it’s not easy. There is not what could be called a lot of interest in poetry in Hickory (or anywhere else these days for that matter). There is even less opportunity for financial remuneration. So, whatever you do, don’t give up your day job to become a poet.

If, despite these unfortunate facts, you are still interested, then here are some tips on how to get started and keep going.

1. READ. Whether you’re in Hickory or Paris, this is the most important element of developing one’s prowess with language. Read everything, of course, but in particular read good contemporary poetry. Anthologies like Contemporary American Poetry and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems are a good place to start. You can find the poets you identify with there and then seek out their books to read further. There are also over 1000 regularly published poetry journals in America, many of which are available for free online. Nearby examples include Wild Goose Poetry Review (www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com), Dead Mule (www.deadmule.com), and Main Street Rag (www.mainstreetrag.com).

2. WRITE. Seems intuitive, but I know many would-be writers who get so caught up in the “busy-ness” of being a writer, that they never get much writing done. Aside from one’s job and family, the only thing a writer should be doing more than writing is reading. There are two possible keys to this process. First, one can schedule his or her writing for the same time every day, just like exercising or bathing, and stick to it. If family and work make that difficult to manage then one can purchase a nice journal and carry with them everywhere and write during whatever free time presents itself.

3. Read “Musings” (this column). The column comes out every other week and is also available online at www.scottowensmusings.blogspot.com if you miss the paper. It will include details on upcoming poetry events in the area, profiles of poets giving readings in the area, sample poems, and the occasional exploration of various poetry topics and issues (like this one).

4. Attend Poetry Hickory and Writers’ Night Out. On the second Tuesday of each month, two well-published writers and three Open Mic readers are featured at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. The featured writers read for about 20 minutes each, and the Open Mic readers for about 10 each. The featured writers usually have copies of their recent books to sell and sign as well. The readings start at 6:30 and are free. They are preceded by Writers’ Night Out, sponsored by the NC Writers’ Network and also free, which begins at 5:00. These are networking sessions attended by anywhere from 10 to 20 area writers, including several “newbies” as well as 3 journal editors, 2 creative writing instructors, and 4 writers who have published at least 5 books each.

5. Take a class. Both CVCC and Lenoir Rhyne offer creative writing classes every semester. If you already have your degree, you can sign up to audit the class as a way of honing your skills and increasing your motivation to write.

Okay, that’s a start. Come back in two weeks, and we’ll continue with the list.

Art Speaks -- A Unique Collaborative Art and Theatre Project

Art Speaks – A unique collaborative art and theatre project

Saint Stephens High School (Hickory, NC) students from Sue Hardy’s Drawing II, III/IV, & Visual Arts III and Molly Rice’s auditioned class of actors, writers, and singers Play Production have collaborated to produce a magazine-style book, art display and performance called “Art Speaks”. The artists and actors have worked closely together in dialogue as partners. The artist and actor together have chosen a persona to bring to life – some include making death, fear, confusion, a secret, broken cell phone, and dog tags speak, among others. The actors have created monologues, poetry, prose, and songs based on their chosen persona and the artist has created art work from their favorite medium.

Forty-six artists and actors met on Tuesdays and Thursdays during class to be a part of each other’s art as it was created. The project was kick started by Irish poet Adrian Rice who shared the “Muck Island” box a joint book made with Irish artist Ross Wilson. Muck Island is housed at Tate Gallery and Harvard University.

Artist Sue Hardy and Poet Molly Rice have teamed up as well to enjoy the experience with their students. Both teachers agreed that it was refreshing to focus on their own artistry since being a teacher leaves little time for creating outside their classroom.

“Art Speaks” will be performed in a unique walk-through production where the audience will get an intimate look at the students’ work.
Saturday Nov. 13th at the Hickory Museums of Art’s Coe Gallery at 4pm. This one-of-a-kind event is free to the public.

In the afternoon, the book “Art Speaks” will be launched.

Books, art prints (for framing), and CDs of the original music produced for the project will be sold. This project has been documented on film and a DVD of the work in progress and performance will be sold at a later date.

For more information, or to order copies of the books, prints, or CDs, contact Molly Rice at mollyrice@embarqmail.com

Campbell and Owens Collaborate on New Collection of Poetry

Reprinted from "Outlook" Newspaper (Observer News Enterprise, Newton, NC)

LOCAL POET’S NEW COLLECTION A COLLABORATION

“I never imagined writing a series of poems with someone else would be so easy,” says Hickory poet Scott Owens when asked about the process he went through with Florida poet Pris Campbell in creating their new collection of poems, The Nature of Attraction, due out from Main Street Rag on July 26.

“Poets tend to be rather hard-headed about their work, but Pris and I never really struggled with ego. I think we both became so interested in the developing story of our two characters, that we let go of all preconceptions of how things ought to be and just kept responding to one poem with another one. Before we knew it we had almost 30 poems, half of which she had written, half of which I had written, one of which we had written together, all of which we had revised together, and all of which combined to tell an interesting and coherent story. I think we both felt extremely lucky.”

Owens has become a fixture in the Catawba County and NC world of poetry. Three years ago he founded the monthly reading series Poetry Hickory and began editing the online journal Wild Goose Poetry Review. Two years ago he began writing a regular column on poetry for Outlook. Since that time, he has published 4 new collections of poetry -- this will be his sixth in all -- and more than 400 poems in journals and anthologies across the country. He has also given over 100 public readings of his work and become Vice President of the Poetry Council of North Carolina and Regional Representative of the NC Writers’ Network.

Campbell does virtually all of her work in poetry from her home in Florida, where she is frequently homebound due to her contraction of CFIDS in 1990, prior to which she had been a clinical psychologist. This will be her fifth collection of poetry. Both writers have been nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes and received a number of other awards for their work.

“The story,” Owens says, “is a love story that begins in unrevealed tragedy and ends in revelation and further tragedy, at least it seems tragic to me.”

The Nature of Attraction will debut at a book release party from 5:30 to 7:00 on August 5 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. The event will include a reading of poems by Owens and the playing of a recording of Campbell reading selections of her own. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and personalization as well. Refreshments will be served. Prospective readers can learn more about the book and its authors by visiting www.mainstreetrag.com/Campbell_Owens.html.

Review of Tim Peeler's "Checking Out"

Review
Checking Out, Poetry by Tim Peeler
Hub City Press, 96 pages
ISBN:

Aging can have certain surprising benefits: less hair to worry about, getting a drink without ID, and having enough knowledge and experience to forge meaningful relationships with those you admired in youth. Last year, I had the great pleasure of reviewing a book of poems by my undergraduate creative writing instructor, Paul Nelson, whom I hadn’t seen or communicated with in nearly 30 years. This year, I find myself reviewing a new book from another of my early “poetry crushes,” Tim Peeler.

I first encountered Peeler’s work about 20 years ago when I was still confused about what to write and how to write about it. His poetry then was about things that were very familiar to me--trailer parks, farms, small town Southern life--and it was written in a way that was approachable, observant, objective, and understatedly real. Those poems served as models to me, in a sense giving me permission to write in a certain way about certain things I had been wanting to write about and have been writing about ever since.

Today, Peeler remains one of my poetry crushes, and he remains as true to his poetic ideals as he does to his friends, family, and hometown of Hickory, NC. So, his new collection of poems, his fifth, entitled Checking Out, is as familiar and important to me as his poems of years ago. In fact, the details of his “Prelude,” which opens the book and mimics the ambition of Wordsworth’s poem by that title, could almost have been my own: “the barefoot child, / shirtless in overalls;” “the congregation of chickens;” “the sun [elevatoring] through / the maples beyond the meadow / where he’s seen angels;” “the forest floor . . . coated with crunch oak leaves, / broken branches, pine cones and needles;” following “the moonlit railroad tracks / out beyond town, skipping a tie, / toeing a rail, imagining animal eyes / in sinister bushes, thinking a poem / without knowing it yet.” This poem also introduces the setting for the rest of the book: “Four AM, the night audit finished, the motel silent / he wrestles the heavy notion of sleep.” One immediately suspects that, as in Frost’s “After Apple Picking,” this will be no ordinary sleep the speaker wrestles with.

Not surprisingly, the title of the next section of poems is “Place.” Over the years, Peeler has more successfully captured a sense of a particular time, place, and people than any other writer I know with the possible exception of Wendell Berry. And in these poems, he does it again, the more particular place this time being the small Southern town hotels he spent years working in. He begins, of course, at the beginning, with inspiration, the inspiration of the man who built the hotel, and the inspiration the hotel-clerk/speaker sought during long nights on duty: “What did he see when he / came out here past the town / after the dust settled on the war?” (II); “You wait for a face / long enough in a place like this; / it will come” (I). From there he begins to explore the memory of this place and time: “Once there was a three story motel building / with balconies that overlooked a drive-in screen” (III); “In the old days, / they’d leave a fourteen year-old boy / in charge of the motel / when they took an afternoon off / to drink some shine” (IV).

He continues, in the section called “Registry,” with the memory of people. He recalls “Stan” who “said he played at Notre Dame / then for the Sox,” but who it is discovered “had been lying / all along, magnificently, / profoundly, beautifully” (VII); and the “Rabb twins,” one of whom “could throw his voice; / the other . . . a mute” who “could / lip synch anything the other said” (X); and “the old men [who] sat for an hour each morning, / hashing and rehashing the past: a retired clerk, // an organ builder, an automobile dealer, a juke joint / entrepreneur, a retired English professor // till they died one by one, / sadly, all” (XIII).

In “Chaos,” Peeler characterizes the experience: “Chaos / when you are not war, / revolution, or murder / you are a Friday night / at a cheap motel” (XV). Then, he continues in this section to provide detailed illustration of the claim: “one woman had another / in a choke hold / pounding her dyed blonde head / against the gravelly parking lot” (XVI); “The night was busy, locals / rolling in off 64-70 / in a haze of marijuana / and George Dickel” (XXI).

Against this backdrop of place and people, a clearer image of the speaker begins to come into focus. In the section named “Swimming,” the reader begins to see that there is much more to the speaker than just his job. In XXV, perhaps my favorite of these poems, the speaker tells us:

I wrote a masters thesis
in a motel room, weekend
manager on duty, typewriter nights;
I answered complaints about myself.

Between check ins
I scribbled pieces of poems,
made up stories about guests,
. . . . . . . . . .

I can't remember how many times
I crawled under a motel building
at 3AM to change a fuse,
put the wheels back on a rollaway,
fixed a commode, walked through
pitch black, blessed by the moon.

I became the poet laureate
for the post office whores,
the random darling
of a small legion of fools,
the familiar of charming drunks,
a blundering father
in the no man's land
of the eighties.

When I dove into the pool
to clean the spot by the drain,
ten feet down, I felt
the dreamy pressure of the
whole world above me,
sensed that the water didn't
want to be there either.

And we continue to get these glimpses into the speaker’s deeper thoughts throughout the section named “Clerks:” “There is no afterlife” (XXVIII); “we thought we’d never grow old (XXXII). And, finally, we get an even rawer perspective on the business through the memorable serial character of “The Old Clerk,” in the section with that title.

At the end, like any good storyteller, Peeler brings it home with a poem that offers closure, in this case a satisfying perspective on the experience. In “I Say It Like a Prayer” (one of only two titled poems in the 52-poem collection,) Peeler tells us:

Some mornings I drive by the motel
where I worked for seven years, and
scenes come back to me in flashes:
. . . . . . . . . .

A man calls me one night
to complain about people talking
in the room next door. The rooms
next to him are unrented. Don’t
you hear all that? he shouts
when I get to his room. I listen
carefully to nothing, to silence.
You’ve got to do something about it;
you’ve got to stop them; it’s your job.
I walk next door, knock, turn the lock
and stare into the dark empty room.
You people shut the hell up I holler
angrily. I mean it damn it
I add for good measure. Thanks,
thanks the man tells me as I walk back by him.

Thanks, thanks I say to the motel
as I drive by to my boring safe job
which is rarely anything to write about.
Thanks I say to the ghosts that rise
with lead pipes and biker boots;
thanks I say to the vices and voices.
I say it like a prayer.