Welcome to where I am, where my kitchen's always messy, a pot's (or a poet) always about to boil over, a dog is always begging to be fed. Drafts of poems on the counter. Windows filled with leaves. Wind. Clouds moving over the mountains. If you like poetry, books, and music--especially dog howls when a siren unwinds down the hill-- you'll like it here.


MY NEW AUTHOR'S SITE, KATHRYNSTRIPLINGBYER.COM, THAT I MYSELF SET UP THROUGH WEEBLY.COM, IS NOW UP. I HAD FUN CREATING THIS SITE AND WOULD RECOMMEND WEEBLY.COM TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN SETTING UP A WEBSITE. I INVITE YOU TO VISIT MY NEW SITE TO KEEP UP WITH EVENTS RELATED TO MY NEW BOOK.


MY NC POET LAUREATE BLOG, MY LAUREATE'S LASSO, WILL REMAIN UP AS AN ARCHIVE OF NC POETS, GRADES K-INFINITY! I INVITE YOU TO VISIT WHEN YOU FEEL THE NEED TO READ SOME GOOD POEMS.

VISIT MY NEW BLOG, MOUNTAIN WOMAN, WHERE YOU WILL FIND UPDATES ON WHAT'S HAPPENING IN MY KITCHEN, IN THE ENVIRONMENT, IN MY IMAGINATION, IN MY GARDEN, AND AMONG MY MOUNTAIN WOMEN FRIENDS.




Sunday, April 26, 2009

PHACELIA, from BLOOD MOUNTAIN (BLACK SHAWL)



Quite a few years back I began a short story from the viewpoint of a young mountain girl "taken advantage of," as we say, by one of the timber "cruisers" sent into the southern Appalachians to scout the best stand of forest to be clear-cut. As in Ron Rash's novel Serena, these timber companies brought ruthless exploitation to the mountains. The story never made its way to completion, but the situation was echoed in a later poem, as part of the sequence "Blood Mountain," from my book Black Shawl. This sequence has been set to music for soprano and piano by my friend Harold Schiffman and premiered a year ago in New York City. It will soon be released on cd.






PHACELIA


Gently, as if swabbing
wounds, she scrubs
stains left from

where they lay down
in the grass. She remembers
her fingers plunged deep

into crushed green, the odor
of light rain, the moldering
leaves going up in a fever

of white flowers till she
can hear herself babbling
such words as forever,

forget-me-not, full
moon, her mouth
like a dovecote of syllables

forced open so she can
taste every sweet
nothing melting away

into silence as she lay
beneath him like trampled
earth already trying

to cover itself with a veil
of such snowy white
as what a bride calls (oh

why can't she hear
what she says?) Sheer
Illusion.





2 comments:

Jane said...

Oh, this is why I read Black Shawl over and over. I thought of you yesterday while I photographing my trillium.

Jessie Carty said...

wonderful!
i love how effortlessly the sexual imagery is woven with the flora!