Sherry Chandler

Owner of Wind Publications, publisher of the Kentucky Literary Newsletter and Calendar, Charlie Hughes is also an excellent poet. (See this post for more on Charlie as publisher.) The poem below is from his collection, Shifting for Myself (Wind, 2002). Charlie says:

this poem refers to US 68 between Lexington and Harrodsburg. I’ve driven it countless times at night. If you’ve ever traveled it you’ll see the connection

I have driven it, slowly and in the daytime. It’s an impressive route along the Kentucky River, which has cut deep into the limestone bedrock, but I think pretty soon the highway/commuter safety police will take it away and give us something bland, ugly and “safe.”

Driving Force

I could have taken the interstate
after the funeral
but don’t. Tonight I want
the river road. I need
the knowledge of water
that has washed for ages over stone
to form this dark gorge.
Tonight give me the hum of an engine
breathing easy in the cool dark,
a road that snakes and clings
to the limestone cliff. I love
the not knowing
what’s around each bend, how the old
Chevy lunges into each curve.
Swift God, give me acceleration
and the surge of shifting gears.
Let the wind’s cool fingers
rip open the night.
O let this hunk of metal and flesh
lean into that wild darkness
the moan of tires holding on for life.

If you question him, Wind Publications’ Charlie Hughes will tell you that he started the Kentucky Literary Newsletter and Calendar as an excuse to flog his own publication list. No matter why he started it, the newsletter has been growing and is containing more and more news. I think Charlie was a fan of the early MobyLives and is offering the same kind of mix. So join the mailing list. But don’t just wait for the bimonthly mailings. Slope on over to the web site once in a while and check things out. Here are some items I picked up over there just today:

Keep Louisville Weird.
Gospel truth: Infrared to reveal 9,000-year secrets
WKU professor, Joe Glaser announces the publication of his translation, The Canterbury Tales in Modern Verse (Hackett Publishing, 2005).
Kaleidowhirl, an online magazine edited by Kentuckian Cynthia Reynolds, seeks submissions
Robert Penn Warren Centennial Prize

He also has several links relevant to the Foetry controversy that are worth following up.

And while you’re at it, check out the Wind Publication list. It is impressive. (I’m eagerly awaiting the reissue of Richard Taylor’s Girty. Charlie’s doing us a service by bringing that book back into print.)

Big doins this whole weekend in honor of Red Warren’s centennial. Western has had the Robert Penn Warren Centennial Celebration and at Gravel Switch there’s the Kentucky Writers Day Celebration at Historic Penn’s General Store with a tribute to Warren. And the U.S. Postal Service has issued a Warren pictorial stamp in honor of the occasion. I refer you to the Kentucky Literary Newsletter and Calendar for details about these events. (Thanks, Charlie, I stole the stamp image from you.) Of course, today, Robert Penn Warren’s birthday, is also Kentucky Writers Day.

I am rather hoping that the weight of these events will balance the scales a bit against the “Just Us” Sunday at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville.

A poem from Robert Penn Warren’s New and Selected Poems 1923-1985 (Random House, 1985):

The Cross

Once, after storm, I stood at the cliff-head,
And up black basalt the sea’s white claws
Still flung their eight fathoms up to have my blood.
In the blaze of new sun they leap in cruel whiteness,
Not forgiving me that their screaming lunges
Had nightlong been no more than a dream
In the tangle and warmth and breathless dark
Of love’s huddle and sleep, while stars were black
And the tempest swooped down to snatch our tiles.

By three, wind down and sun still high,
I walked the beach of the little cove
Where scavengings of the waves were flung—
Old oranges, cordage, a bottle of beer
With the cap still tight, a baby-doll
But the face smashed in, a boom from some mast,
And most desperately hunched by volcanic stone
As though trying to cling in some final hope,
But downed hours back you could be damned sure,
The monkey, wide-eyed, bewildered yet
By the terrible screechings and jerks and bangs,
And no friend to come and just say ciao.

I took him up, looked in his eyes,
As orbed as dark aggies, as bright as tears,
With a glaucous glint in deep sightlessness,
Yet still seeming human with all they had seen—
Like yours or mine, if luck had run out.

So, like a fool, I said ciao to him.

Under wet fur I felt how skin slid loose
On the poor little bones, and the delicate
fingers yet grasped, at God knew what.
So I sat with him there, watching wind abate.

No funnel on the horizon showed.
And of course, no sail. And the cliff’s shadow
Had found the cove. Well, time to go.

I took time, yes, to bury him,
In a scraped-out hole, little cairn on top.
And I enough fool to improvise
A cross—

Two sticks tied together to prop in the sand.

But what use that? The sea comes back.

The Highland is not the Highview and not all Kentucky Baptists are theocons (from ABC News):

“This is deceptive, manipulative and false,” said Joe Phelps [Pastor of the Highland Baptist Church in Louiville],who joined nearly two dozen other ministers Friday at a news conference to criticize the [Justice Sunday] event [at Highview Baptist]. “Stop. Please stop.”

The Rev. Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said the event splits people of faith into those who agree with Perkins’ group and those who don’t, resulting in a polarization of Christian voters.

“This ad campaign should be called ‘Just Us Sunday’ instead of ‘Justice Sunday,’” Edgar said.

Tina Parker was a fellow member of the Jim Hall master class in 2000 and is a fellow member of Mosaic. She is featured in the Sideshow exhibit and has a poem forthcoming in Defect Cult. The poem below is from Limestone 2001.

Professions of Faith

I. Baptism, 1986

I twirled baton in my front yard
afterwards, listened
to Madonna sing Open your heart
to me, imagined myself blonde,
a full-chested cherub now able
to snack on crackers and grape
juice on Sundays in the church.
Then I hit STOP on my pink boom
box, asked forgiveness.
This is how I’m different, I thought.
Then I threw my baton into the air,
turned a full circle,
and watched it fall, end to end,
to the ground.

II. Rededication, 1988

I stood at my pew until the last
chorus
      Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling
thought of the dirty words I’d called
my brother
Come home, come home
Down front, the preacher asked
salvation, rededication, or the mission field.
I closed my eyes, guessed at the middle
one, wondered if I’d be baptized
again. There must’ve been a prayer,
a presentation to the rows of teen
campers. I only remember waiting
in line for the pay phone, anxious
to tell my parents. My turn, I told
of tie-dying T-shirts and having
fried chicken for dinner.

III. The Missionary, 1990

Lottie Moon married God,
went with him to China.
I would serve Senegal,
except for my crush
on the visiting singer.
I tried to answer the call
during his rendition of In the Garden
but instead re-wrote the chorus…
Andy walks with me, Andy talks
with me, Andy tells me I am his own.
Blushing from the first row
I vowed instead to learn French
and give half my wages in waitress
tips to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.

The Henry K. Leadingham Prose & Poetry Reading & Reception will be held in Frankfort (Kentucky) on Saturday, April 23rd at 8:00 PM. Leatha Kendrick and Georgia Stamper will read from their works at the Kentucky History Center, then visit with attendees at a wine and cheese reception at the Kentucky Coffeetree Café just across down the street. For further information contact faf@dcr.net 502-875-4ART (4278) www.frankfortarts.com

Let me tell you that these are two of the most delightful women writing in Central Kentucky today, wonderful writers, wonderful readers. And I’m not just saying this because Georgia and I went to high school together. What better way to celebrate the bard’s birthday??

There’s actually probably a more interesting conversation – about form – going on over at Poesy Galore:

Repetition–also mentioned on Charles’s post, and posited as being “masculine”–also seems human condition-related to me (eternal recurrence and so on). And biological, astronomical, etc. Getting your period each month is nature’s lousiest villanelle–and, woe is I, feminine.

A, shall I say passionate?, Foetry conversation going on over at Silliman’s blog. I clipped this from a comment from Anonymous (several of those — are they all the same man [women don't usually talk pissing contests] or just cousins?):

Poetry contest entrants are paying money for the opportunity to be (purportedly) judged objectively, and it is this exchange of dollars that makes the poetry contest racket an especiallly heinous crime. Foetry was correct to label this as fraud punishable by law.

It’s too bad Foetry had to be run by a vengeful, emotional twit who delights in rumor mongering. Most of the site was devoted to dishing dirt — not solving the problem. I wonder how this might have turned out had the oppostion approached the problem with vehemence AND some modicum of grace. Foetry should have supplied the careful objectivity and judiciousness that’s missing from the poetry world, not just urinate from the opposite direction.

Perhaps most damaging: The whole episode, broadcast on NPR and written up in the Times, confirms the public’s worst suspicion about poets: They’re childish, back-biting academics who care only about themselves and their own petty agendas. Foetry didn’t clean up poetry; it just caked on a new color of dirt.

Thanks to that Exceptional Writer Jeff Hess for pointing out that tales of Foetry’s demise are premature. Says newly outed Alan Cordle:

It’s the biased and poorly researched article in the New York Times declaring a surrender. Reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West flying through the sky, “Surrender Foetry.” You can thank Foets, Janet Holmes who has threatened me with legal action, and Jorie Graham, who said that I lied. Well, Foets, the site’s back up and I stand behind the information here.

The opposition is at whoisfoetry? and at Humanophone.

I stand sort of like Switzerland in this controversy – aggressively neutral. And I really didn’t want to express an opinion but—here I go with my Rodney King moment.

A famous poet once told me that contests are the way to get a poetry collection published, advice I will probably ignore. Although my first chapbook was published because I entered a contest I did not win, and I can understand why book publishers run contests – the market for poetry books is not huge – I tend to agree with those who argue that contests turn publishing into a lottery. Do I have an alternative? Other than passing a law that says each citizen must buy one poetry book a year, no.

I know on a very small scale that judging contests can present you with difficult choices – the community of poets is small and blinding is not always enough to keep you from recognizing the work of colleagues. And you can recognize that that work is far and away the best of the entries. Fortunately for me, I’ve nearly always judged as part of a team, so I had a built-in check of my perceptions (and the contests I’ve judged have been small and insignificant to all but the participants).

On the other hand, I don’t see the harm in shedding a little daylight on the process. Foetry is aggressive and offensive in approach – a little too “scorched earth” as The Reading Experience puts it – but I think I’m correct in stating that at least one publisher, Sarabande, decided to except former students of judges from their contests as a result of Foetry’s actions. That doesn’t really seem like a bad thing to me.

Steven R. Cope is a man of many parts. As I wrote about a year ago, in a review of Clover’s Log (Wind, 2004) that I somehow never managed to place:

Steven R. Cope is a latter day troubadour. For over thirty years, he has been singing the matter of Kentucky, sometimes in bars accompanied by a guitar, sometimes in gatherings of poets at coffee shops and bookstores. The troubadours invented Romance. It was they who defined chivalry and gave us the legends of King Arthur. Cope is just as romantic but his knight errant is a slippery mountain creature named Clover.

He’s also very busy – since 2002, he’s published a novel, two poetry collections, a book of fables, and a children’s book.

Steve has graciously consented to participate in my catblogging feature with the poem below, from Clover’s Log. (The photo is of William, a blind tabby who graced our household briefly.) Of Tabby, Steve says:

Tabby would be very pleased. She was a beautiful creature, born blind, that lived with me for 15 years–the most innocent thing I’ve ever known. (I wrote most of Sassafras and much of my poetry w/ Tabby on my lap.) As the poem suggests, I expect one day to see her again (and her to see me).

To Linda C., Safely in Orlando
—Sept. 7, 2001—

Tabby is dead.
First the gold eyes,

the one tooth,
then the ears, even,

blind. In the end
she had the hardest time

knowing which way to go,
where her round water was,

her litter was,
I was.

She finally stayed
in my chair,

waiting for my hand,
eyes wide out at nothing,

and when I returned
she was there,

no, not there, —
and not fifty miles away

beneath a rock with the others,
my old black tee-shirt

wearing her,
where I shall come for them

all together,
hair lit up like foxfire

and singing, oh—
like a prodigy.