Poetic Response to "The Gravedigger's Roots"

A Poetic Response to “The Gravedigger’s Roots”
(first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review)

I don’t usually publish my own poems in my column, but a while back I did publish my poetic response to Jessie Carty’s book “Paper House” because the poem served as a sort of “review” of her book. I did the same thing after reading Tony Abbott’s “New and Selected Poems.”

The fact that a book prompts me to write a poem of my own says a great deal about the impact the book has on me. Writing a poem, after all, is not an easy thing to do. It would be easier just to move on to the next book. Some books, however, “move in” once you read them. They take up residence in your psyche -- the place where most poems are born.

Such was the case with both Carty’s and Abbott’s books and now with Robert King’s “The Gravedigger’s Roots.” This 2009 collection from Shared Roads Press consists of 51 poems written from the perspective of a persona whose significant role in the world is that of a gravedigger. While such a perspective might lead some to assume the poems are inherently macabre, what the reader finds instead is poetry with a wide range of emotional and philosophical contexts all connected by the ever-looming presence and awareness of that ultimate human reality, mortality. I personally found the poems to be refreshingly Romantic in their dealing with that common inevitability. The underlying message of these poems certainly echoes the work of both Whitman and Emerson, but the styles, language and imagery have all been updated to make the reading more immediately relevant and enjoyable.

Readers interested in ordering their own copy of “The Gravedigger’s Roots” can do so at www.sharedroads.net. Now here is my poetic response to the book. The italicized line is stolen from one of Kings’ poems.

The Keeper
after Robert S. King

Heel on shoulder,
hands gripping the shaft,
shift weight forward,
press down,
thin roots popping as the blade moves through,
lean back,
lift.

A hole the only thing it makes,
absence, empty space,
and yet without it, nothing grows,
necessity the smallest understand.

Most come here not to die
but simply to be dead.
Precious few come to live
and do the work
of keeping things going.

POETRY COUNCIL COMPLETES WORK, PREPARES FOR POETRY DAY

The Poetry Council of North Carolina, an organization that for 58 years has worked to foster a greater appreciation for and appreciation of poetry in NC by sponsoring contests and events for adults and children, has concluded its work on this year’s competitions and is preparing now to highlight the winners of those competitions at its annual Poetry Day, to be held October 16 at Catawba College in Salisbury.

This year’s big winners include Greensboro’s Rhett Iseman Trull, recipient of the Oscar Arnold Young Award for the best book of poems published by a North Carolinian, for her book, The Real Warnings. Trull will be spending a great deal of time in Hickory this year, appearing at Lenoir Rhyne as part of their “In Their Own Words” visiting writer series on September 16 with NC Poet Laureate Cathy Smith-Bowers, returning in the spring as Lenoir-Rhyne’s writer-in-residence, and reading at Poetry Hickory on March 8.

A recent visitor at Poetry Hickory, Tony Abbott, who read here on September 14, received second place in the book competition for his New & Selected Poems. Other finalists in the book competition who have read at Poetry Hickory in the past year include Linda Annas Ferguson and Alex Grant. Award recipients in other categories also include recent and upcoming Poetry Hickory readers: Sara Claytor and Bill Griffin, both of whom read last year; Richard Allen Taylor, who is part of November’s event; and Malaika King Albrecht, who will read with Trull on March 8.

Poetry Day events begin on October 16 with registration at 9:20, followed by the dedication of this years’ awards anthology, Bay Leaves, honoring Main Street Rag Publisher and Editor, M. Scott Douglass, for his unparalleled contributions to the NC poetry community. The highlight of the event will be the recognition of category winners and readings from those winners. Following lunch, entertainer Bob Whyte will perform. Poetry Day is open to the public. Lunch can be reserved for $8 at www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com. A complete list of this year’s winners and sample poems from Trull and Abbott can also be seen there.

The Catawba County area is well-represented on the Poetry Council by locals Scott Owens (Vice President), Bud Caywood (Free Verse Contest Manager), Nancy Posey (High School Contest Manager), and regular Poetry Hickory attendee, Jessie Carty of Charlotte (Humorous Verse Contest Manager). The Poetry Council is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Further information on Poetry Day, or the Council’s annual contests, or details on how to support the Council is available on the website or by contacting President Ed Cockrell at edcockrell@hotmail.com or Scott Owens at asowens1@yahoo.com.

A Poetic Response to Jessie Carty’s Paper House

A Poetic Response to Jessie Carty’s Paper House
Folded Word, 2010, 90 pages, $12
ISBN: 9780977816743

I have written reviews of each of Jessie Carty’s first two collections of poetry, At the A & P Meridiem (Pudding House, 2009) and The Wait of Atom (Folded Word, 2009), so when her new collection, Paper House, came out a couple of months ago, I knew I’d read it, I knew I’d like it, and I knew I wanted to do something besides write another review about it. I had no idea what that something might be, but then almost as soon as I started reading the poems, it became clear to me that Carty had given me a metaphor that I simply couldn’t resist stealing. So, in lieu of review of what is, by the way, a very enjoyable book of poems, I offer the following “reflection” along with my sincerest encouragement for you to order your copy of Paper House now.

Paper House
after Jessie Carty

What is a poem but a paper house,
every word a window or door,
the title a welcome mat,
every image a family portrait,
photo album, or home movie,
an endless possibility of rooms
furnished with the finest internal
rhyme, alliteration, conceit,
illuminated by epiphany,
kept clean through catharsis,
the only walls the printed page,
inhabited by people you know, family,
old friends, some you’ve missed,
some you hoped you’d forget.

New Dead Mule Online

The new issue of Dead Mule is online with poems by my students, Ethan Sigmon, Jeremy Deal, and Bethea Buchanan. There are also poems by some of my favorites: Harry Calhoun, Bud Caywood, Joe Milford, Karla Merrifield, Jessie Carty, and Felicia Mitchell. Here is a link: http://www.deadmule.com/poetry/

3 Days, 3 Readings

I have 3 very exciting readings starting this Saturday (4/10) at 2:00 at the Burke County Library Meeting Room (204 King St., Morganton) with Jessie Carty and Tim Peeler. Then on Sunday, I'll be in Raleigh at Quail Ridge Books (3522 Wade Ave) at 3:00 with Peter Makuck and Nancy Carter. Finally, on Monday, I'll be in Mitchell Community College's Rotary Auditorium at 7:30.

Review of Jessie Carty's "The Wait of Atom"

Review
The Wait of Atom, by Jessie Carty
Folded Word Press, 2009 (ISBN: 9780977816705)

Jessie knows men. She gets that it’s the detail they revel in, whether it’s sports, or cars, or the contours of good wood, or in this case, chemistry. It’s what keeps the brain from focusing on disquietude, displeasure, disappointment, dissatisfaction, disenfranchisement, or any number of other “disses,” all of which are various manifestations of the human inability to know whether we’ve gotten anything right at all. In other words, the details we fill our lives with are distraction from what might otherwise produce the dangers of depression, desperation, dysfunction, and a sense of impotence against the oppression of time, nature, society, and inescapable ignorance.

But don’t think Jessie is just male-bashing. She doesn’t characterize just men as Eliot’s man-brute Sweeney because Jessie knows women too. She gets that they are the same as men . . . only different. She gets that the struggles are the same but the distractions different. Just as her Atom has “learned / to keep his eyes focused on a point / just over her shoulder while he let his brain / scan the periodic table of elements,” her Zoe has learned that “her purse had to match her shoes” (“The Wait of Atom”) and to want “a full church and months of / preparation. Preachers and parties. / Invitations and tradition” (“Bright Beacon”).

And Jessie knows psychology and sociology, and of course chemistry. She knows that the source of these differences is not, ironically given the structure of the book, chemical at all, but rather environmental, as is made clear in “Pink Was the Color of His Weakness,” a poem in which the two main characters fulfill the expectations of various “visitors” all the while harboring contrary truths about their personalities: “They always asked him about his comic books. // . . . as she / would try to discuss the rows of romance novels / that no one knew he wrote.”

And don’t think that her new book of poems The Wait of Atom is even remotely as heavy-handed, dry, or nihilistic as this review might suggest because another thing that Jessie knows is poetry readers. She knows that the darkness of these poems is best kept just under the surface to be experienced by most almost subliminally or to be ferreted out by only the most careful of readers. She knows that the surface will fare much better with humor and the opportunity for light self-reflection, allowing any reader the momentary chuckle when they recognize their own habits, as they will, among those of Atom and Zoe.

Besides, “The Amateur Geologist,” the best of these poems, and meaningfully the last of them, can only be seen as dark and nihilistic if one considers existentialism as inherently nihilistic. We see the subject of this poem “searching” on what he “calls” “a path,” and having found a temporary satisfaction, he returns, “cradling his prize,” “to his abandoned bike, / wheels still spinning / as if they had achieved / perpetual motion.” This wonderful metaphor for human endeavor to find value in life is Sisyphean, and thus existential, suggesting that the endeavor itself, the perpetual spinning, the ceaseless search, remains sufficient and justifies the constant doubt and the necessary diversions we undertake to keep the wheels in motion.

My Favorite Book of Poems in Years

My Favorite Book of Poems in Years

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my favorite poem from the last few years. It was “Album” by Felicia Mitchell. Today I’m writing about the author of my favorite book of poems from the last few years. I read about 100 new books of poems every year. Half of those I don’t like enough to finish, but the other half all impress me, many of them enough to motivate me to write a review of the book. Reading that many poetry collections makes choosing one as a favorite quite difficult, but the one that I’m declaring to be my favorite is simply the one that has lingered in my mind the longest. The remarkable lyricism and compelling narrative of Joanna Catherine Scott’s Night Huntress made reading it an unforgettable event.

While I’m discussing favorites, I’ll mention that the most enjoyable poetry reading I’ve ever given took place last spring at Catawba College. What made it so enjoyable was not just the hospitality of the college or the 200 or so students in attendance, but the person I was reading with. This was my first time meeting Joanna Catherine Scott, and it was a meeting I’ll never forget.

That night I discovered that Scott was a beautiful speaker and an unequaled intellect, and when I subsequently read more of her work, I realized she was simply the most impressive writer I had encountered in many years. Her poetry and prose are both lyrical and accessible, familiar and exotic, concerned with both individual and international issues. In a review of Night Huntress, I recently wrote, “Scott possesses the true writer’s gift, the gift of empathy, the ability to see inside another’s pain, loss, hope without being blinded by it.”

Scott has applied that empathy to stories and poems about everything from Vietnam veterans, to a family’s loss of their daughter, to prisoners on death row, and on February 9, she will share those stories with the audience at Poetry Hickory, held at 6:30 in Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. Scott says her intention at that reading will be to tell the story of how her novels The Road from Chapel Hill and Child of the South led her to Death Row and her current project, a collection of poems entitled An Innocent in the House of the Dead.

I anticipate that this will be one of my favorite Poetry Hickory events not only because Joanna Catherine Scott will be reading, but also because her co-reader will be Felicia Mitchell, and the Open Mic readers will be Poetry Hickory favorites and two of my favorite people, Jessie Carty and Tony Ricciardelli, and first-timer, Bill Blackley, former President of the NC Poetry Society.

Here is a poem from Scott’s Night Huntress (first published in Damazine) to whet your appetite.

In Which You Tell Me You Have Set Islam Aside

I used to dream, you say, that one day
I would take a pilgrimage to Mecca,

but I have given Islam up.
I have taken my name off all the lists.
I no longer go to pray,
although I pray to Allah in my heart.
I thank him for the Qur’an,
which I also have inside my heart.
Get knowledge and understanding,
it instructs me.
And so I read and read and think,
and argue with myself, and others too,
and have become a wiser person
on account of it,
which is why I have set Islam aside.
What point is there,
I came to understand,
in fighting with an enemy
who has the upper hand?
What point in setting myself up
for persecution by the guards and warden
because I wear the Muslim cap
and fast for Ramadan?
A man must act upon his wisdom.
So I have set aside the kufi.
I do not abase myself.
I have light within me, though.
They cannot take that away.

… And I Drive Home in the Rain
The fallen sky laying itself out
and laying itself out along the road
like grey-clad pilgrims
abasing themselves full-length
and rising,
and then the abasement,
and the rising up again,
end-to-ending themselves
like inchworms inching their way
across grey countryside
toward the holy city,
pelted on, and blown up
into a thousand falling fragments
by lumbering grey trucks.
Gathering themselves together.
Shaking off the insult.
Rising and abasing.
Rising and abasing.
And being blessed for it.
And blessed for it.
That glittering
spinning of the wheels.

Review of Paternity

The first review of my new book of poems, Paternity, is online now at http://www.poetsquarterly.com/. Jessie Carty, founder of Folded Word Press and Shape of a Box journal and author, herself, of two chapbooks of poetry and a forthcoming full-length volume, does a great job of tracing the progression of the sections of the book and pulling out the central conflicts and motivations behind the poems. I couldn't be happier with the review, and I hope you'll all visit Poet's Quarterly to take a look.

Twins, the Weasleys, and "The Wait of Atom" or What's the Difference Anyway?

Musings for January 14, 2010

Twins, the Weasleys, and “The Wait of Atom” or
What’s the Difference Anyway?

Twins are intriguing. They seem to be the living embodiment of the idea of comparison and contrast. We are astutely aware of each twin’s similarities to the other, but we know they are different, even if we struggle to put their differences into words.

My favorite twins are not the Olsens or the Weasleys or Castor and Pollux or anyone, living of myth for that matter, but rather the twin concepts of art and science. The two words have been linked in the phrase “arts and sciences” for as long as I can remember and I’m sure a great deal longer, but we use them separately as well, albeit not always with any clear distinction. There have been, for example, recent books called both The Art of Cooking and The Science of Cooking. My son is majoring in political science, but when he finishes his degree he’ll receive a Bachelor of Arts. There are countless books about the art of love, but just last year NBC ran a special called The Science of Love. And finally, while a recent Psychology Today article was titled “The Science of a Good Marriage,” Wilferd Peterson’s well-known poem on the topic is called “The Art of Marriage.”

And that’s where I begin today--at the intersection of poetry, art, science, and relationships. This intersection is where one finds the fascinating new book of poems called The Wait of Atom, by Charlotte poet and Poetry Hickory regular, Jessie Carty. The poems in this book explore the often contrasting, often complementary, and often surprisingly contrary-to-convention perspectives of a man and a woman in a relationship. Each of the poems is also couched in the terminology of the Periodic Table of Elements, creating a wonderful juxtaposition of what is usually considered art (poetry) and what is usually considered science (the table of elements), implying that even these seemingly disparate concepts are much more closely related than we typically imagine them to be. While we all too readily imagine that art is “from Venus” and science “from Mars,” this collection of poems blurs those lines, making it clear that sometimes art is “from Mars” and sometimes science “from Venus,” and illustrating that while, like all twins and all people in a relationship, art and science are distinct, taken together they also exist as a single complex and vibrant entity.

Not only are the poems in Carty’s collection works or art (or science), but so too is the book itself. Handcrafted, embossed, and bound by Folded Word Press, the book can be ordered for $9 at http://www.foldedword.com/buy.html. If you go to that site, you should also watch the informative and very entertaining video called “Constructing Atoms.” To give you a sense of what to expect from The Wait of Atom, here is the title poem, first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review:

The Wait of Atom

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t wait for her
or not even that he didn’t want
to wait for her, he just couldn’t
stand still. She couldn’t stand it,
the way his eyes became nearly crossed,
how he jangled the change in his pocket.
She’d complained before.

To keep his face from registering
annoyance, he began mentally listing
the noble gases by weight: lowest to highest,
using his hands in his pockets to count each one.
He could do this without moving his lips.
His face relaxed even though she was still
transferring her personal items
from a brown purse to a black one.

She had explained, on more than one occasion,
how her purse had to match her shoes. How
his belt should match his shoes and he’d learned
to keep his eyes focused on a point
just over her shoulder while he let his brain
scan the periodic table of elements.

Dead Mule Round-Up

DEAD MULE ROUND-UP

No, I haven’t lost my mind. There is not really going to be a round-up of farm animals, alive or dead, in Hickory, at least not in the sense you might be thinking.

“Dead Mule,” in the world of poets, is one of the best online literary journals in the country today, and I am particularly fond of it because it specializes in Southern literature. The Mule, as its friends call it, has published two of my chapbooks in the past two years and one of Tim Peeler’s (another Hickory poet) as well. It has also been the first journal to publish the works of 9 of my students at CVCC.

Officially the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, editors Val MacEwan and Helen Losse have decided to hold a reading by poets who have been published in the Mule, and they’ve decided to let Poetry Hickory host that reading. The reading will take place at 6:00 on Tuesday, August 4 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory, the same place most Poetry Hickory readings occur.

Currently 6 poets will be featured, although Losse expects that number to increase to 8 or 9 by August 4. The 6 readers already committed are an impressive group to say the least. In addition to myself, Losse, and Peeler, the reading will include Jessie Carty of Charlotte (editor of the journal “Shape of a Box” and author of “At the A & P Meridiem”), Felicia Mitchell of Virginia (author of “The Cleft of the Rock”) and Terri Kirby Erickson of Salisbury (author of “Thread Count” and “Telling Tales of Dusk”).

These six readers have written a combined total of 18 collections of poetry. Anytime you get that many poets with that much experience together in the same room, something spectacular is bound to happen. The readings are free and open to the public. For more information, call me at 828-234-4266 or email me at asowens1@yahoo.com.

One Reason I'm Proud of Hickory

ONE REASON I’M PROUD OF HICKORY

Hickory is not known as a Mecca of the arts. We do okay for a city of roughly 35,000. But we have no professional theater or dance troupe, no recording or movie studios. In fact, we don’t even have a large performance venue like our closest neighbors in Lenoir and Morganton.

And yet, as I travel to poetry readings and writers’ conferences across the state, I run into one widely published poet after another who wants to come to Hickory to participate in Poetry Hickory. Why, you might ask, do such literary notables want to drive from places like Asheville or Raleigh or Charleston, SC, to participate in a reading series that doesn’t pay and is held in a small coffee shop with no more than café seating for about 60 people?

The answer is because poets need an audience. There are few, if any, material rewards for writing poetry today, so poets thrive on the sense that they’re being heard, that they’re having some sort of impact, making some sort of difference, and that their efforts are appreciated by the relatively small body of contemporary poetry readers. I’m proud to say that those who attend Poetry Hickory deliver all this and more.

I’ve been to dozens of readings in bigger cities like Asheville, Raleigh, Charleston, and Charlotte and except for readings on college campuses, the audience has been consistently larger here, consistently more attentive, and consistently more appreciative. These qualities have helped put Hickory on the poetry map in NC. Readers so far this year have come from all the cities named above as well as Mt. Olive, Goldsboro, Mebane, and Laurens, SC, and have published a total of 55 books.

Poetry Hickory is held at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory on the second Tuesday of each month. Each event begins at 6:30 with three “Open Mic” readers (meaning anyone who wants to can do so) who are followed by two featured writers (writers who have published at least one book or a large number of individual pieces). Recently, a writers’ networking group, called simply Writers’ Night Out, also began meeting at Tasteful Beans at 5:00 prior to each reading. These meetings have consistently had 10 to 13 participants ranging in age from 16 to 80 and including both writers who are unpublished and writers who are widely published. The group even includes three magazine editors, one of whom drives from Charlotte, another from Winston-Salem. Jessie Carty, the editor from Charlotte, has even begun recording Poetry Hickory and putting excerpts on YouTube as part of her The Shape of a Box journal.

On August 11, Chapel Hill poet, Sara Claytor, and Charlotte poet, Ann Campanella, will be featured at Poetry Hickory’s 24th reading, and I know two things about that evening already: both poets will be glad they came, and I will be proud to say I’m from Hickory. For more information about Poetry Hickory, contact me at asowens1@yahoo.com.

Interview with Jessie Carty

Jessie Carty is the author of a collection of poetry entitled At the A and P Meridiem and editor of a unique YouTube literary journal called Shape of a Box. She is a graduate of the Queens University creative writing program and currently lives in Charlotte. Her poetry has been widely published and on Tuesday, July 14, she will be a featured reader along with Margaret Boothe Baddour at Poetry Hickory, held at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory at 6:30 PM. I sat with her recently and asked her a few questions in preparation for her reading. Here is that interview.

Owens: "Shape of a Box" is the only literary journal on YouTube that I'm aware of. Where did you get the idea to do a YouTube journal?

Carty: During most of 2008 I was toying with the idea of starting a literary magazine, but I wasn't sure what format I wanted to work in. I wanted to do something "different". I originally thought I would publish an online magazine but I just had this light bulb kind of moment where I decided to consider putting video and poetry together. I was already a fan of YouTube so I started searching for poets. I found a lot of poets working on their own but I found no evidence of an actual literary magazine that published on YouTube (there are a few lit mags that have content up, such as their open mike events). The idea just stuck and "Shape of a Box" was born!

Owens: What has been the highlight for you of the first year of "Shape of a Box?" And where do you see the magazine going from here?

Carty: The highlight of working with "Shape of a Box" has been the variety of work I've been given the opportunity to read. There is so much talent out there! Putting together weekly issues of "Shape of a Box" has been very time consuming. I think for my second year I am going to move the magazine to a monthly publication. I will have reading periods once a month (for about two weeks) and then one issue a month that will be a longer video than the ones up now which may include work by more than one writer in a given issue.

Owens: What was your inspiration for the structure of your book, "At the A and P Meridiem"?

Carty: I wrote the poem "7pm" for my very first MFA workshop. I was having trouble titling it and chose 7pm because I felt the poem just had this feeling of that time of the day. The poem was well received and I had been trying to put together a chapbook when I thought, hmm, a poem for each hour of the day could work well in a chapbook. I then went back through poems I had written and discoverd I had quite a few that could fit an hour of the day so the process began.

Owens: Do you see the poems in "At the A and P Meridiem" as a coherent unit? Aside from the controlling motif of the hours, how are they thematically linked or what story do they tell when placed together?

Carty: I find the poems in "At the A and P Meridiem" to be a coherent unit in the sense that they are all looking into the specificity of a moment. In some sense the poems are like a montage of a day, as if you were looking through each window in an apartment building, the speakers are somehow connected by more than just the time of the day but by their proximity to each other. I think the poems link to each other in how, I hope, my readers can relate to the emotion of a moment, of an individual event.

Owens: So, is there a message in "At the A and P Meridiem," something you'd like the reader to realize or conclude?

Carty: I'd like for people to read "At the A and P Meridiem" and come away with the sense that we are all very much alike despite the diverse ways we live the hours of our lives.
Owens: Why poetry? Why do you write it, and why do you seek to publish it?
Carty: I really can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in poetry. I apparently made up poems before I could even write about things such as dandelions (a plant I still find fascinating even if other people insist on calling it a weed). I've tried other genres but they just do not work for me. I am a poet. I love the music of how words work against each other. To me, being a poet is writing from each word to the next, so writing poems is where I belong. I think a certain amount of seeking publication is to validate myself as a writer, but I really just like the idea that someone might connect with one of my poems in they way that I have connected with the work of other poets. Writing and reading poetry is all about understanding yourself and others through words. Who doesn't love a good Ah-ha moment?

Owens: This interview is being written for a newspaper audience in Hickory, NC. As a poet and "poetry advocate," is there anything you'd like to say to that audience?

Carty: Hickory is such an amazing town. I commuted to work in Hickory (1 hour each way) for 5 years, simply because I liked the people I worked with. I think the people of Hickory might be surprised at the wealth of writers and artists in their community but with articles like this and events like Poetry Hickory, hopefully, the people of the Catawba Valley area will get out there and support some of their local artists!