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Homecoming – Sam Ragan and Shelby Stephenson

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Fred Chappell, GCDPS, Lenard D. Moore, NC Poetry Society, NC Poets, NCPS, poetry, Press 53, Sam Ragan, Sharon Sharpe, Shelby Stephenson, Southern writing, Susan Laughter Myers, Weymouth on March 22, 2015| Leave a Comment »

. . . it is nothing but a song – the long journey home:

Homecoming – what sort of images does that word evoke?

Marching band lined up, the girls with their blue and gold pom poms, boys becoming men bursting through crepe paper onto the field.

All the old families filing into Salem Fork Baptist for preaching, and in the afternoon pot luck under the willow oaks.

A long absence, a holiday, sitting down to share the meal with family, wondering where you really belong and beginning to get an inkling.

The prodigal returning to discover the grace of unconditional love.

. . .

How about this one: men and women who have known each other for fifty years, or one year, or just today, gathered in a single great room to listen and be silent, to laugh and to cry, to start out wondering whether they belong and discover themselves bound together by the soul of words into one family.

Sam Ragan Poetry Festival at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities and the tenth anniversary celebration of the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series – friends, it was one hell of a homecoming! Oh yes, the readings, Fred Chappell bringing new poems, fables and morals to slap you upside the head; Gilbert-Chappell mentors Cathy Smith Bowers, Joseph Bathanti, Lenard D. Moore, Tony Abbott each with their prized student protege from the program; from basketball to angels; from love lost to love well shet of; from growing up to growing old to refusing in any fashion to grow old. And the greetings – more hugs and handclasps per unit time than any baby shower or wake or political convention on record.

And then there was Shelby Stephenson. Our “newest” NC Poet Laureate? How about our oldest and truest friend and guide? Has anyone in our state done more to encourage poets? To teach and encourage? To just plain get the poetry joy juice flowing in the crowd’s veins?

When I read the announcement that Shelby had been selected as Poet Laureate I immediately dug out my file – all the rejection slips he sent me while he was editor at Pembroke magazine. Friends, you would have to knock me down to get me to part with these sixteen little 2 x 3 inch slips of yellow paper (some actually just a post-it note with the Pembroke rubber stamp). Almost every one has a personal scribble: “good luck placing these” . . . “keep writing” . . . ” liked [poem] best” . . . “send more any time.” My God, how I harassed him with submissions until glory be one was good enough to keep.

Shelby Stephenson, thanks for the poetry homecoming. I am still discovering where I belong.

* * * * *

from fiddledee
(read by Shelby at the 2015 Sam Ragan Poetry Festival)

Saying I need an image to make the world
I went back home and held my eyes on the hill
and it said You need a word deeper than I

so I took the old fencerails the lizards ran
and my family’s tongue came out of the Mouth
of Buzzard’s Branch, the sound of that one story,

everywhere, in the marshes, in the fields,
and lowgrounds, and I said Where is the word
that holds All I am trying to say? –

and the cows lowed through their cuds over
and over it is nothing but a song – the long journey home:

* * * * *

. . . let go the body: the cardinal

flowers stretch across the landscape, handsome
in their high keys: there goes a plankhouse into
a hedge: we come from a desert of innumerable

dances made in pain and pleasure arriving
forever, America’s promise, Huckleberry
laid back every spring when the little green

corn is sided, what broken clods to bounce
in the dirt: the literature of the world
is the people: Whitman, where are you? Our

faculties run out into the unknown:
results are beginning, continuously
extending the plain chance to hold a seat,

here, hardy as a foot soldier: an articulate
voice lowers to let the mind down so the
undergarments might hear humanity

in the bosom stumbling back to breathe independently:
transitory, we bequeath to thee, O Death,
this victorious song thou breaks, the word

of the singer, his parentage and home,
the wood in the flames a quiet crackle
of no hurry going up and out, moving

the dust that settles the ashes, a tune,
a farway injury of happiness,
a bliss that is hard to empty: time and space

affirm the rhythm, the dimensions of
across and around: wrap a tent around
the music and steal away: images edge

the feelings like heels grinding lightly on
a board of closest imaginative
stances delighting the reapers in the

wheat, the keepers in the creek: the word is
another form of dancing: the body
moves on the surface just over truth: we

live amid the skin: the true art of
experience is practiced by the skipper
bugs: they skate so well: I clap my hands and

the water scoots a wake beating with a
new beauty: and the line which begins behind
is brought forward: I look back one more time

to draw a radiance in language, a
radical system formless and grammatically
mountainous and divine, mortal as the

fertilizing rain, a lingering space
that gives the celebration a morning, noon
and night swallowed up by the dallying and playing

world holding the ancient beard in an avenging
dance, a cosmos for jollity: high in
the pocket of a farmhouse I am alone,

a laughing moon brightening like an orange on ice.

* * * * *

fiddledeedee
© 2014 by Shelby Stephenson, Press 53, Winston-Salem, NC

More information about Shelby at http://www.shelbystephenson.com/home.htm

* * * * *

Over the next couple of weeks I will share more vignettes, poetry and photos from the 2015 Sam Ragan Poetry Festival & tenth anniversary celebration of the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poetry Series

Also check back for a link to the full photo gallery, forthcoming

* * * * *

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Walking into April – 2012

Posted in Imagery, tagged Barton College, Debra Kaufman, GCDPS, Michael White, NCPS, poetry, Sam Ragan, Southern writing on April 18, 2012| 4 Comments »

My middle name, just like my father and his father, is Wilson. The county just east of Wake and just south of Nash is Wilson. Its county seat and the home of Barton College is Wilson. Is that why, when I drive past the magnolias and stately homes onto the pastoral campus and walk beneath the loblollies and grand willow oaks to the Sam and Marjorie Ragan Writing Center, is that why I feel so connected?

This second Saturday in April is the tenth annual (OK, Marty Silverthorne says it’s the ninth) celebration of National Poetry Month by Walking into April, a collaboration of the NC Poetry Society, Barton College, and the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series.

. . . . .

Wild Geranium

Let Us Walk Into April

It was a pear tree in bloom
That lit up your eyes.
You came at blossom time –
Dogwoods and lilacs,
The camellia and azalea,
And the glow of the redbud tree –
Thousands of wildflowers run before your feet,
And a faint green hovers in the woods.
Here we are just before the coming of April,
When the whole world is new
And each day is a beginning,
A time of sunlight and splendor –
Come, let us walk into April.

Sam Ragan, NC Poet Laureate 1982-1996

. . . . .

In the morning: readings by two featured poets (this year Debra Kaufman and me), a round-table discussion. In the afternoon: readings by each of the Eastern region’s Gilbert-Chappell students, a reading by their Distinguished Poet mentor (this year Michael White from UNC Wilmington), and of course open mic.

My impression, after attending Walking last year and again this year, is that this is a time and a place to become connected. The young Gilbert-Chappell poets (Elizabeth is still in Middle School) connect to their mentor for months via prompts, suggestions, critiques — literary bonding. This day of reading is the culmination, the pinnacle of all the poetry they’ve worked on together. A few faces are present at the meeting year after year: Becky Godwin, our Barton College sponsor; Marty Silverthorne, without whom no open mic could be complete; Bill Blackley, to remind us of the legacy of Marie Gilbert and Fred Chappell in creating this program. And of course Sam Ragan is ever present. His vision and creative spirit, keeping bright the connections between the literature of our past and the hottest verse of today, are a major reason North Carolina has become such a state of poetry.

Well, I just had a wonderful day and once again I feel connected to a big encouraging family, all of us blood kin because of the poetry in our genes.

. . . . .

Elizabeth: Spring “. . . eventually something will grow from the ashes of a fire!”

Rachel: I Am Spring “I am the recovered youth in all life.”

Nancy: Spring Poem “I felt perfect . . . like the butterfly poised on the coral azaleas.”

Lauren: To Be Celebrated “speechless . . . grasping for verbs of uninvented languages.”

. . . . .

During the morning reading, Debra Kaufman shared poems from several of her earlier book and then focused on her new collection, The Next Moment (2010 Jacar Press). The poems cover an entire life’s span with sensitive maturity and a light touch that brings me, the reader, into the poem’s very moment. The petals of star magnolia and tulip are falling; the breeze already hints of July; I will re-read these poems and traverse the seasons and the years.

. . . . .

Shimmer

After the rain, heat
rises in mirage-like waves
on their hike to the river –
father, son, pregnant mom.
They sit midstream on boulders
and dip their feet in.

Above the river’s burble,
a high-pitched, ear-tickling thrill –
language of the infinitesimal –
and a horde of tiny angels
fills the hazy sky,
translucent wings glinting.

They’re going on into infinity,
the boy says, proud
to use the new word he learned,
along with optical illusion,
from a traveling magic show.
They watch, not talking,

until the cloud thins, disappears.
The woman wants
to say miraculous, but know
her husband would scoff.
the boy spies the first
split husk on a twig.

They find hundreds of shells
of the creatures
that ascended in a holy cloud,
then dispersed to light in trees,
beings that will sing lullabyes –
a choir of breathing – all summer long.

. . . . .

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Driving Into April

Posted in Imagery, tagged Barton College, GCDPS, poetry, seasonal imagery, spring on April 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Leave the Carolina silverbells blooming up the Elkin Valley. The foothills daffodils are still bright but curling at the edges. Now Redbud Alley, I-40 where it slices through woodlands between Winston-Salem and Kernersville, is about a week past its peak. Raspberry sherbet ribboned with lime. In Durham after showers the corner of every parking lot is drifted with yellow layers like foam the tide has ebbed to discard. We park for an hour or two, and the overhanging sweetgum trees cover our hood with anthers like clusters of powdery nerf grapes.

Now I’m on I-540 escaping Raleigh; Knightsdale aproaches and my eyes are burning. Zebulon and sneezing can’t be more than minutes away. By the time I reach Wilson the season has advanced a good two weeks, and Barton College is planted firmly into April. I park behind the music building (it’s Weekend College and every lot is full), walk two blocks, and Rebecca Godwin is waiting to welcome us into the Sam and Marjorie Ragan Writing Center with Aunt Edna’s ginger snaps. And poetry.

Walking into April! Poets and poetry, greeting old friends with a hug, discovering that the impressive writers presenting their work today have now become your new friends, clapping to suport new poets that have come to read for the first time: just about every time I go to a poetry reading in this state, it feels like coming home.

The afternoon session of Walking into April always begins with this year’s Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet and his students. More on John Hoppenthaler in a forthcoming post, but here is some bright imagery from the verse presented by this year’s students:

Cindy Thompson: “Let yourself become the fight, the dance.”

Nancy Seate: “It isn’t the object but the light it reflects.”

Candace Jones: ” . . . when the world is barking too loud.”

Marty Silverthorne: “sabers and rifles will grow like weeds. / Maybe we should plant boots / so when the marching blister’s busted, / blood would not ooze out weakened stitches.” [from Prayer for Boots, in the voice of his Civil War ancestor]

Sometimes April seems like the month of Too Much Poetry Stuff, but come next April on the second Saturday I’m saying, “Damn the pollen, full speed ahead!” and driving right into it.