Sherry Chandler

The Mosaic poets had great fun reading poems of love at Fauntleroy’s Café and Espresso Bar last night. We were pleased to play before a full house, and we gave them all the angles: new love, old love, hot love, cold love, and love gone wrong. The latté and espresso were delicious, the audience was quick and attentive, Sonja Brooks’s fiber art was (and is) brilliant, and Genie Walker’s jazz vocals were easy on the ear. I thought she was especially charming on the sing-along rendition of Happy Birthday. Thanks to all of you for that delightful surprise – and somehow a cherry tart seems like just the right birthday treat for the occasion. Thanks, too, to Genie for giving us a chance to strut our stuff.

Sonja’s art will be there through the end of the month and there are still two more great jazz programs to catch in February — click the program above to view the PDF file for details. The House Writers will be reading fiction on March 3. I’ll post more details as I have them.

For those of you who missed this delightful event (I may be a little prejudiced here), Jean-Marie Welch has agreed to share one of the poems she read last night:

Morning Glories

The summer she was told
he fastened four long pine planters
atop their fence –
above these,
a gossamer trellis
of fine fishing line.

From her bedside window
she could watch
their last shared vision
unfold:

a dense curtain
of morning glories
ink blue
climbing skyward
with no visible
means of support

like his prayer.

      Published in: Appalachian Heritage, summer issue, 2003

I have been talking to Patricia Monaghan, editor of the current NILAS Newsletter. Patricia says:

NILAS is an interesting and important organization, one that breaks down the barriers between academic and non-academic intellectual work. Storytellers, poets, and other creative types are as much part of NILAS as those with academic appointments (the current president is a storyteller).

I was pleased with the femininity of the [current newsletter] collection … that more women seemed to be writing (and writing VERY well) about plants. Also the underlying theme of sensuality–it was all a bit like having the literary equivalent of Georgia O’Keeffe coming into my mailbox.

I give you one more poem from the Fall 2004 Newsletter, this one from Frankfort poet Normandi Ellis. Normandi is the president-elect of the National Association of Poetry Therapy Foundation and works with elders and youth at risk. While Ann Lederer’s poem dealt with harvest and the season’s end, Normandi’s gives us the season’s beginning. These last few sunny lengthening days – some of them warm – remind me that the earth is turning and soon, none too soon to suit me, it will be –

Late April, John’s Branch

This morning on yesterday’s shorn lawn –
dandelion tufts
and rain-drenched violets.
Redbuds recede into green leafing
trees. Bluebells bloom their last
among the tall creek bank grass.
Blues and pinks fade fast –
now comes the season of white dogwood and locusts,
a season of yellow wood poppies.
Underneath the green umbrella of leaves
white mayapples flower.
Rain drips into the red
upturned lips of trillium.

Handing down and trading plants is, it seems to me, a tradition with women so writing about them should come natural to us. The white trillium pictured here has bloomed against the north side of our house for thirty plus years, surviving drought and flood. My late mother-in-law brought it here from the Red River Gorge during a time when the river was going to be dammed and folk were allowed to take what they could find. Fortunately, that damming did not happen, and I consider the trillium a legacy that I guard with care.

The theme of the next NILAS Newsletter (Winter 2005) will be “Experiencing Animal Presence: Totemism, Shapeshifting, Story” – nonfiction and fiction, poetry and artworks that evoke cross-species empathy and communication through what NILAS refers to as totemic expression. Submissions should be e-mailed to Marion W. Copeland, guest editor, or mailed to her at

128 Amherst Road
Pelham, MA 01002

Deadline for submission: Monday March 14, 2005

Addendum: I highly recommend Patricia Monaghan’s two latest collections of poems: Dancing with Chaos (Salmon, 2003) and Homefront (FootHills, 2004).

Photo and bird-feeder installation by TR Williams.

Bonfire
After the fire has died I lie tangled
in the sheets with you, bake my aches
against the hot brick of your back.
Ambition dwindles
in the drowsy burr of your snore.

What need of belief to relieve
the black and white of winter,
the shudder of flesh like a branch
after the bird has flown. Coals blink,
then turn cold ash.

        from My Will and Testament Is on the Desk

It’s time for Reel Kentucky over at the Kentucky History Center. This Sunday’s feature is “Steamboat Round the Bend,” a film loosely based on Ben Lucien Burman’s 1933 novel by the same title.

Ben Lucien Burman (1895-1984 – roughly co-eval with my own grandfather) was born in Covington (Lookout Heights), worked as a journalist, was injured in World War I, and won a French Legion of Honor for his work as a war correspondent in World War II. In 1927, he married Elizabeth Cady, and in 1929, he and Elizabeth signed on with the Tennessee Belle as roustabout and cook. This experience seems to have been formative, for between 1929 (The Mississippi) and 1978 (Look Down that Winding River), Burman wrote 18 novels about life on the river boats. These books won prizes, were book club selections, were made into movies and plays.

Burman also wrote a series of prize-winning animal fables for children, set in mythical Catfish Bend on the Mississippi. Illustrated by Elizabeth Cady Burman, the Catfish Bend stories were translated into ten languages. So many people came looking for the place that the city of Baton Rouge and the U.S. Coast Guard designated a river light Catfish Bend.

I got this information from William S. Ward’s A Literary History of Kentucky, because I had never heard of Ben Lucien Burman and had to look him up. According to Ward:

Some readers and critics complain that Burman’s [riverboat]books are too gentle and too sweet…they ignore the seamy and criminal side of the world he writes about, that there is no penetrating analysis and no earnest search for meaning. Indeed, it must be said that seldom does he allow anything bad to happen…His characters have their faults but they are childlike faults … Though not profound books, they are not devoid of meaning. As a matter of fact, Burman repeatedly insists, “The theme of every book I have written is the child-likeness of all humanity. We are all children, groping our way through life, we know not how, seeking the Holy Grail.”

You can buy a first edition of Steamboat Round the Bend over at Between the Covers for a bargain $300.You’ll find the Burman papers at Tulane and a description of the Burman historical marker here.

The film, “Steamboat Round the Bend,” was directed by John Ford, stars Will Rogers in his last movie performance and features Paducah native Irvin S. Cobb.

If, like me, you would like to know more about this remarkable Kentuckian or if you just love old movies, go on over to the historical center this Sunday (Feb 20, 2 pm). (While you’re there, check out the Keeneland Changing Exhibit “A River Runs Through Us,” all about the rivers in Kentucky and the role they’ve played in our history.) Kentucky State University film scholar Steven Gale and KHS curator Michael Hudson will lead a brief discussion after the film. Running time: 80 minutes. The event is free and so’s the popcorn!

My Fall 2004 NILAS Newsletter just came in. At first I thought it was a little late but then I realized it was operating on poetry publication time. This reckoning is somewhat similar to my grandfather’s sun time — or at any rate to the way he judged noon by the sun when I would follow him to the field all those years ago. And like the leftover bacon and biscuits in the field lunch, this newsletter tastes all the better for the wait.

It looks unassuming – just a sheaf of letter paper stapled in the upper right corner like any photocopied office document. But guest editor Patricia Monaghan, a Pushcart Prize winner, has called on poets from Alaska to Mississippi, from Vermont to California, and over the sea to Ireland to comment on the theme “Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds.” The result is a collection that Lexington poet Ann Neuser Lederer aptly describes as “a treat.”

There is a considerable Kentucky connection – Ann is included, as am I, and also Frankfort poet and mentor of poets, Normandi Ellis. Ann Fisher-Wirth, whose chapbook The Trinket Poems was published in Wind #90, also has a poem in the collection.

My NILAS Newsletter poem, posted as this week’s entry on the Poetry page, concerns my ongoing battle with poison ivy. Says Ann,

Many familar chords: I’ve tried kettles of boiling water, in addition to the garbing up that you describe. But after a bad rash, now mainly avoidance. It’s tangled so with the regular ivy and some odd small ground loving morning glories, that I’m now inclined to let the whole mess do what it wants to.

Here is a glimpse into Ann’s own chemical-free garden from NILAS:

Harvesting

Right before the first killing frost,
I gathered the last tiny tomatoes to dry,
now sweeter from cold, and nostalgia.

I rescued the plumes of Russian sage,
like blue breaths sucked inward, then held.
As I plucked the laced dill, her seeds
escaped among the elfin mints.

I brooded on my harvest, as though it were
my own tall boy
chasing his footprints at the ocean’s edge,
just as when he was a toddler.

I sat down with pride at my outdoor table,
with bees made restless by their premonitions.

The purple grapes glowing
in the late sunshine
need not be mentioned
as I did not really grow them,
nor the pumpkin I would add to complete
the appropriate palette.

Received this in an e-mail today:

We need your art!!

Visual and performing artists needed to contribute work relating to issues of sexual violence.

Your work will be featured Friday, February 18, 5:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. at Third Street Stuff Coffee as part of Break the Silence , an event addressing sexual violence through visual art and the spoken word.

This event coincides with Gallery Hop, so you are guaranteed visibility!

We can transport pieces, can display the pieces anonymously, can read any written work should the author prefer us to do so, and will be displaying the pieces from 5 pm to midnight on Friday. Any performances of written work will take place starting at 7 pm.

To clarify the subject matter we are looking for: Any pieces dealing with issues surrounding sexual violence–and by the term “sexual violence,” we are referring to sexual discrimination, harassment, abuse, assault, etc.

For more information:

Contact Transylvania University SGC (Sexual Grievance Committee) at sgc@transy.edu or Ali Murray at (859) 229-5311 or amurray@transy.edu by Friday afternoon.

This event hosted by Transylvania University SGC and sponsored by Third Street Stuff, Lexington, Kentucky.

and my 60th birthday, I turn to Horace. Like him, I am content enough with my little farm out in the country, beyond the ministrations of boys in goat skins. Here is Ode 1.11:

Please don’t ask to scry the unspoken, Leuconoe,
What end the gods may send,
Not to me, nor to you,
And don’t contend with Babel’s own numbers.
Better thus: Whatever is to be, let be.
If there remain many winters or if
Jupiter now lets forth the last,
Which spends its waves’ force on Etruscan rocks
Opposing. Be wise: strain wine,
Resect long plans for short days.
As we speak, a jealous age has fled.
Pluck the day at hand, it’s as well as may be
Not to trust the one that’s coming.

Translation and bowl by TR Williams. Thanks to Nedda K. Hughes for the birthday roses.

You will find the original Latin and a prose translation here.

To address, if not answer, Georgia’s question about Cupid and his arrows in the comments, according to the resident classicist, Cupid had two kinds of arrows — arrows of gold and arrows of lead. If he hit you with a golden arrow, you fell in love with the one you gazed upon; hit with the lead, you fell into hate. And here, I believe, we have the plot to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the mischievous fairy Puck in place of the mischievous god, Cupid.

Sins of the Flesh

Is it evil, Lord
to be so charmed
by juices of the night
that I cannot conceive of leaving
mortal touch?
How can Spirit
ever match this fever,
skin on skin,
nerve-tingled love
of loving –
unless the body’s wolfish appetites
transmigrate to higher realms
where Your caress
waits to enflame me,
flesh and core.
I will Your coals of fire
to sear my lips,
Your spittle to ease the burn.
Press me, praising,
to the length of you,
then let me go
and bid good-bye
to the messy, melancholy
copulating world.

      –from Mary E. O’Dell, A Dangerous Man

a love who’s like a red, red rose…