Poet of the Week Archive: August, 2006

August 21-27, 2006: A Bouquet of Poems by Winston-Salem Poets

A Word about Winston-Salem:

Winston-Salem is a pleasant place to live, with a number of institutions offering exceptional programs in the arts -- theNorth Carolina School of the Arts; Salem College and its Center for Women Writers; Reynolda House Museum of American Art; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art; Winston-Salem State University; and Wake Forest University. Downtown, the beautifully renovated Stevens Center has a film series that has filled an important need, and poetry slams attract lively audiences in urban settings for a younger set. Every other year the National Black Theater Festival showcases work by new and emerging African-American playwrights and theater companies.

Among the best known writers in Winston-Salem are Maya Angelou, who came to teach at Wake Forest in 1982 and gives public readings and speaks at many community occasions; and John Ehle, whose vision inspired the North Carolina School of the Arts and who has written many books of fiction and nonfiction. (Ehle's novel, The Land Breakers, is the choice for this year's On the Same Page community read, sponsored by the Forsyth County Library.) Visiting writers have stopped in Winston-Salem for memorable occasions. In 1992 the first North Carolina Women Writers Conference, held at Salem and Winston-Salem State, presented 150 of the state's best writers -- including Doris Betts, Jaki Shelton Green, Lee Smith, and the late Linda Flowers -- in a weekend of programs attended by more than l,000 participants. An annual Irish Festival is directed by Candace Jones, long-time associate of the Wake Forest University Press's Irish poetry series.

Winston-Salem now has her own annual literary festival (BookMarks) and a new literary publishing house (Press 53), which has reissued Ehle's The Land Breakers. Winston-Salem Writersmeets at the public library every month. Special Occasions is an excellent independent book store, specializing in books by African Americans. Although the Rainbow News & Café went out of business some years ago, it left a legacy of cultural get-togethers and remains vivid in the memories of the area's writers and readers. Winston-Salem's size makes it easy for friends to meet up at the end of the day -- often in one of the emerging popular places in downtown, which young people and arts activities have revived. Street festivals have returned.

A pantheon of legendary visiting writers adds to Winston-Salem's luster. Perhaps chief among them is the Columbus County-born poet A.R. Ammons. Until his death in 2001, he was often in Winston-Salem with his wife, Phyllis, and their son, John: on the campus of Wake Forest, where he was in residence from time to time; at his favorite place to eat -- the K&W Cafeteria; at Reynolda House, where he often read and where Ken Frazelle and other artists celebrated him. Somewhere in the city Julie Montgomery Street lived and wrote. Gwendolyn Brooks gave a memorable reading at Winston-Salem State. W.H. Auden, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates: they've read to Winston-Salem audiences. Next spring, Mary Oliver will give one of her rare public readings, at Salem College.

Centuries ago, Moravian settlers brought culture and customs, still part of Winston-Salem today, in words and music. Every Easter small bands circulate in neighborhoods, playing to wake the sleepers and bring them to the square in Salem for a religious service. The sound of poets -- in the work of the three Winston-Salem poets presented below -- is another welcoming sound. Come.
-- Emily Herring Wilson

Emily Herring Wilson is a Georgia native and a graduate of Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (present-day UNC-G). She is a poet and nonfiction writer who lives in Winston-Salem, where she and her family became friends with A.R. Ammons and his family during Archie's first residency at his alma mater, Wake Forest University ('49). Her most recent book isNo One Gardens Alone: A Life of Elizabeth Lawrence (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004). Her poetry appeared on this web site in August, 2005.

A Word about This Week's Writers:

Of course, Winston-Salem has many fine poets, some of whom have already been featured on this web site. The three poets showcased in this week's feature have spent their adult lives in Winston-Salem and have profited from the literary presences in their midst, the late A.R. Ammons chief among them.

Isabel Zuber was a favorite of Ammons: he called her "one smart cookie." Her poetry has the sharp-edged quality of gnomic revelation, and although lately she has turned to fiction, her collection Red Lily would grace any publisher's list.

Becky Gibson has been in the same poetry group as Isabel, the two of them reading and critiquing each others' work for years. Both have won the North Carolina Writers' Network's annual Randall Jarrell/Harperprints chapbook competition. Becky's poems are densely layered tapestries that show us the fabric of women's lives, medieval and contemporary.

Helen Losse, a former student of Jane Mead, turns much of her attention to nature and the way nature calls us into a deeper understanding of our lives and the lives of those we love. When she sent me an e-mail message a year ago introducing herself and her work,
I found the sensuous detail in her poems unforgettable. -- K.S.B.

Becky Gould Gibson

Flying in the River
                     for Beulah Hunt Chapman (1910-1997)

Down past the spring, past the milk,
the glass jug buried in mud, water up to its neck,
how long since I've gone off just to get cool,
left you girls scouring the floors, trimming the wicks,
you boys sweeping the yard with a dogwood branch.
You know the spot where poplars meet,
cast nets of shadow for tadpoles and minnows.
This time there'll be milk enough and cold for later.
Now the deepest part, I get goosebumps, even on the inside,
my white frock soaks through like my whole body
leaks milk. As the river swells my bodice, stones
in my chest start to loosen, float off -- the baby's death
ages ago, your father's slow dying, brother falling
in the fire, the mortgage, years too dry for cotton and corn.
Water in my palms, I sow the river with seeds of light.
A revival needs no tent, no footwashing crowd.
My skirttail catches a current, and I'm drunk,
drunk on peace, I'm flying, flying in the river.
So when clouds begin to clabber, darken to a bruise,
drops pocking the skin of water as braids unpin themselves,
it's too late to shout for one of you boys.
The jug's already shimmied free, set out.
When milk takes a swell, it travels fast.
I can only watch stock-still in my river-dress as your dinner
dances downstream, glass ringing the rocks.

Field Work
                     for Ella Eliza Rice Chapman (1877-1968)

You were the old woman in dark shapeless dresses
I was made to kiss at family reunions, silver
braids worn like a crown, missing index finger.
I see you in your prime, saturated with light,
sweat shimmering on your white throat, bodice opened
several buttons, woman glistening with enterprise
as you till the acres left you along with the children,
chop out chickweed, crabgrass, the spidery legs
clotted with clay, tap around the soft clean shoots.
You'll soon go in for cold biscuit, buttermilk,
spend an hour out of this heat, heat you know drives
underground to the young sprout grasping dirt
like a baby pulling itself up for the first time.
Roasting ears -- these rows will feed them well into fall,
kernels bursting on their tongues, milk white
as the moon shivering in the pines each night
you wake to cover them. You hum to yourself,
Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.
But you don't want to hide, you want God
to get a clear sight of you out in the field -- sole provider,
your own field seldom fallow, nine young ones
counting two dead boys, you the lithe gleaming blade,
instrument of their survival, so when you're gone
your back's bright curve still inhabits the field.

Putting Up Damson Preserves
                     for James Leland Chapman (1866-1916)

You were right. I've never seen such fruit --
knobs the size of a man's thumb clustered blue
on every branch. That scrawny old tree
shawled in lichen lace I thought dead you brought back,
spread manure under every spring till you died,
each year a few more pints. You left for good
too soon. A woman alone with these children.
You'd not know the girls, all filled out, the boys too.
The ripeness you've missed.

That's Marie at the sink seeding plums, splitting
each one along the crease. It's you she's most like,
the sad, deep-set eyes, feelings bruised so easily.
She watches me watching the fruit, taking it
down to its sweetness, likes to lick foam from
the spoon, its color recalling the sash on the dress
I once danced in. But I'm not the girl you knew,
nor the woman either, here in the kitchen
with you gone off like steam.

I'm not sure I'd have you back I'm so used to going
to bed by myself, no warm-breathing man pulling
at my gown-strings. Where your hands went
I'm still smooth. When you first came to me in the dark
I was scared, then you brought me close. I thought
I would fall, but where you took me I could not
fall enough -- split, unseeded, beyond blue
to purple, black, back to white, fruit to flower,
bee, beginning of the world.

Now I keep summer in jars, shelved for pale winter
tongues. Sometimes I take one down to taste
the blue sweet all over again.

Triptych

Mary, Maiden

"The angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. . . .'" -- The Gospel according to Luke

Words were spoken -- God needed a woman
and she's the one. She stands marveling over
what she's just heard. This was something,
to conceive without a man. Palms sweating,
she kneels to steady herself. Then
the words begin to stir, not what she imagined,
submitting to God, but a jolt, a tingling,
rivers rushing; yet the currents are hers,
the chill, birthing will be hers, the child,
suckling his green years. Her flesh is in motion,
flesh has its own rhythms, thrills to the words
of the angel, striking her pleasure --
saints, shrines, miracles all seeded.
Already she longs for the son she will lose,
poor girl shivering on her knees
confused and blessed, confused in her blessing.
Only moments have passed.
She looks around, no one is there.

Mary, Mother

"Every word which he spake, whether it were good or bad,
was a deed, and became a marvel." -- The Gospel according to Thomas

The women washing linens at the river
have not spoken since she arrived,
though she heard their laughter through
the olive trees. She knows these silences.
Sighing, she wrings out the small tunic
still stained with mud. When he bade his
clay sparrows: Go! their blood thumped wild,
and they flew, free of this world.
But his words also bring grief, deeds sudden
and terrible, those who vex him
withered or blinded, struck down dead;
and though they're healed, some days
she'd rather have a child more like the others,
merely running from place to place.

She ties up her bundle to leave, not looking
back. The vial of her presence breaks,
her need spills, swelling the waters.
Where she stooped, the wind shifts,
sun on stone, and the women, oblivious
as their children, resume their talk,
words light, rhythmic, winging the bright air.

Mary, Crone

". . . she slumbered and saw a beautiful youth. . . .She perceived it was Jesus, and he told her that the garments were her shroud, and he vanished."
--The Discourse of Theodosius

As light sinks in the west, she wakes sobbing,
bedclothes damp. If she keeps perfectly
quiet, she feels drumming deep in her belly.
She must put her house in order, wash up the pots.
Tomorrow she turns to the east to utter
her last prayer. Her attending virgins have never
bathed the dead. Will they remember
to heat the water? She unfolds linens she laid by,
gathers the spices and oils. In the garden,
they wait for her call, voices trembling
like tiny glass bells. Has the pomegranate ripened?
She longs for a taste of death, his promise
made flesh, her body no longer her own,
now translated to God's tongue. Early morning
lamps will be lit and she'll lie clean, new to herself,
oiled, scented, stretched out on spiced linens,
as if her lover were coming to her at last.

Becky Gould Gibson's poems have appeared in many journals, including The St. Andrews Review, Laurel Review, Connecticut River Review, Emrys Journal, Cumberland Poetry Review, Cold Mountain Review, Crucible, Pembroke Magazine, Southern Poetry Review (where "Triptych" first appeared), Hiram Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Iris: A Journal About Women, Potato Eyes(where "Flying in the River" first appeared), Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Literature and Art, Ekphrasis, Feminist Studies, and Brooklyn Review, as well as in several anthologies, most recently Working the Dirt: An Anthology of Southern Poets(2003). Awards and grants include a North Carolina Arts Council writers' fellowship (1993), nomination for the twentieth annual Pushcart Prize in Poetry (1995), recognition as first runner-up for the 1995 William & Kingman Page capbook award, finalist for the 1995 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, finalist for the 2000 Kalliope Sue Elkind poetry prize, a residency at Vermont Studio Center (February, 2000), and a Regional Artists Project Grant from the Winston-Salem-Forsyth County Arts Council (2000). She has published two prizewinning chapbooks of poetry -- Off-Road Meditations (North Carolina Writers' Network, 1989) and Holding Ground (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1996),where "Field Work" and "Putting Up Damson Preserves" first appeared -- and one full-length volume, First Life (Emrys Press, 1997). Poems are forthcoming in 10th Muse(Southampton, England), Tears in the Fence (Dorset, England), Shearsman(England), The South Carolina Review, and Comstock Review.

Helen Losse

Restoration

I want to hang your picture, sad in the hall,
you who've been neglected all these months

with your face turned to the wall and me
wrongly insisting that hanging your picture was
nothing more than a temporal act.

The way the sun struck that certain tree this morning
made the leaves white with meaning,
though thick dust had collected,
under each parlor chair.

"There are shadows to deal with," I said.

To deal with a shadow is to bind it forever.

Nothing's powerful as forever
unless it's just gone.

On the Path To Jericho

Then on the path to Jericho,
I'm plagued by uncertainty,

"Is the man wearing a top coat
my neighbor?" A girl nudges me,

startles me with gentleness. We dance.
And the way she tells the story:

No one dances alone. "Include
is a verb," she explains.

"Am I wearing the clothing of a liar?"
I ask. Thankfully, she does not answer.

At Evensong
                     for my mother, Elsie R. Jones, with love

At five o'clock we left the gift shop,
climbed to the Abbey's balcony.
The antiphon was about to start.
The religious came, entered,
slowly -- from all directions -- sending
chanted psalms through colored panes.

Wild lilacs climbed the marble walls.
And smoke, then incense, filled the air.
Soft rays from the setting sun,
pinks and shades of
muted lavender,

drenched our cool, jacketed shoulders.
The colors stroked us, loved us.
And we loved softly back. Why
we loved even the shadows in Conyers,
where the Angel of the Hour
had simply come, dressed in blue.
Cloistered monks had broken silence,

and the poems
and the songs and the prayers
were homing pigeons
bound for home.

Point of Departure

There's an echo against the cliff
below the castle where the sand is
wet with tears, seaweed
a faded shade of brown. A tide-driven froth
coats my bare white feet.
Beachcombers in lingering shadows
rummage through fragments. The only light
is an orange moon.
The tide is green.

                                 . . . Listen, listen.
All dreamers hear sounds, whispered by shells.
Some hear the Atlantic as she softly moans.
While the story travels, up, riding the flotsam
and sea foam, and slowly unfolds,
the trees near the ocean's edge hint at
what happened.

Yes, they only hint, --
but oh! Oh, at the point of departure,
how the spirits speak! Sounds like
horrible groans. Sounds.
Like the rattle of chains. Sounds.
Listen. Listen hard. For the voice of the echo
is joined to the cliff by salty tears,
the tears who married that dark, dark sand.

             The bones of kings,
who last saw Ghana as they
sailed away, crossing the vast and silver water,
are preserved by salt and have settled,
though probed now by small, mean fish,
several fathoms deep on the ocean floor,
where the whole world is as black as it was --
in the hold of the slaver's ship.

Helen Losse is a poet, free lance writer, and poetry co-editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Her poems have appeared most recently in Mastodon Dentist, Right Hand Pointing, Blue Fifth Review, Southern Hum, Adagio Verse Quarterly, The Centrifugal Eye, The Blueprint: An Assemblage of the Fifth Element, For Poetry, JMWW, and Scorched Earth. She has a chapbook, Gathering the Broken Pieces, available from FootHills Publishing, from which "Point of Departure" is drawn. Her second chapbook, Paper Snowflakes, from which the other poems that appear here are drawn, is forthcoming from Southern Hum Press this fall. Educated at Missouri Southern State and Wake Forest universities, she lives in Winston-Salem, where she occasionally writes book reviews for The Winston-Salem Journal.

Isabel Zuber

Guided, a Path

My fields, he said, my land
and increase for my kind,
flung his arms over rows and rows
of autumn gathering
under a sharp, clear sky,

but the downward beckoned.
When someone waved in silence
from the edge of the woods
he went to see, following
the bare curved track

through yellowed stubble
into forest, into soundless dark
and then, seduced, he never stopped,
not even when leaves,
trees, branches, light

all vanished and
she came in gold
bearing a cradle
under a silken weaving
of webbed and circling flowers.

Lifting a corner, the golden beast
showed him the infant curled
inside, small, glowing, no
shape he could name
and yet he knew

contained therein
was all he had ever been
and all that he would be again
and that everything
every thing is kin.

Bane and Simples

A current physic
curses me, administered
without trial, insight,

for recovery or else.
I war among prescriptions,
tear off labels, jumble

pills. It doesn't matter.
Some remedy or other
will seek me. I can't hide.

Old practitioner,
wherever you believe,
is cure there? In plant,

dull bone, grass,
hank of hair, a touch,
the outlawed prayer?

They

After we had destroyed them all
we came to worship their art,
would sit for hours in conquered, fretted
doorways to watch the play of fountains
on paved courtyards, fondling the while
those carved stone dogs. We wrapped ourselves
in sinuous robes of a fabric we could
not name, hid our rough invaders' faces
behind bland masks with narrow plucked brows.
The smoke of pipes polished as water
curled from our nostrils. We drank
the bitterest, the most severe of all
their remedies, forgot our own memories.
Flute, drums moved our bodies in dances
we never made and in time we prayed
to the very gods who could not save them.

When the Queen

When the queen hurried to
the garden to plead for
her life her judges were

nearly assembled, a
cold stone whetting an edge.
Heads of tall gaudy gay

dahlias nodded beside
the thyme-scented path. By
stifling then a private

theology she put
hand to her embroidered
heart, swore eternal faith,

and spoke so fair she saved
herself while her soul shrank
to the size of a fine

silver thimble. Something,
she thought, almost that small
could hold all of her blood.

Isabel Zuber was born and grew up in Boone. She lives in Winston-Salem, was a librarian at Wake Forest University for many years, and is now writing full time.

Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in a number of literary magazines, including The American Voice, Poetry, Now & Then, Pembroke Magazine, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review. Some of her prizes include the North Carolina Writers' Network's annual Randall Jarrell/Harperprints chapbook award, the Lee Smith Award for Fiction from the Appalachian Writers Association, the University of Tennessee Press prize for short story, and a Forsyth County Arts Council grant. She was selected as one of the readers in the North Carolina Writers' Network's Blumenthal Writers & Readers series. Her poetry collections are Oriflamb and Winter's Exile and her novel, Salt, was published by Picador USA. Salt was selected in 2003 for Virginia Commonwealth University's First Novel award, which is presented as part of the James River Literary Festival in Richmond. She was one of the guest readers at the Eudora Welty Writers Symposium at Miss Welty's alma mater in Mississippi and will give a reading as part of the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series at Appalachian State University in March.